Woroni Edition Nine 2017

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Week 5, Semester 2, 2017

woroni VOL. 67, Issue 9. Week 5, Semester 2, 2017

‘TOO CLOSE TO CALL’

POLLS OPEN FOR STUDENTS TO DECIDE ON ANUSA’S FUTURE DIRECTION

Text: Jasper Lindell & Bella Di Mattina-Beven

Undergraduate students at the ANU will be given the chance to head to the polls and determine the future of their students’ association this week with campaigners set to work the nonexclusion zone pavements.

Many student politics observers and those familiar with the campaigns have said that the election is too close to call, as all candidates have implored students to vote.

The current vice-president, Eleanor Kay, has faced the current social officer, Cameron Allan, in a close campaign which has so far focused on strong personalities, the National Union of Students (NUS), and the future of revenue for ANUSA. An independent candidate, Natasha Kumar, entered the race last – a Facebook page went live on 12 August – with a welfare-based platform on a naive campaign. Her policies focus heavily on women’s issues, and countering disadvantage.

If elected she would be the first woman of colour to serve as ANUSA president in more than a decade.

Her policies are informed by her advocacy and pastoral roles as deputy disabilities officer in 2014, and her roles at Headspace and Lifeline, she told the presidential debate last week.

Policies include supporting the 15 demands made by ANUSA and PARSA in response to the AHRC survey on sexual assault and sexual harassment, specifically on perpetrator accountability, and providing better lighting on campus.

She would also implement better support systems for struggling students, including interest free student loans for housing emergencies, larger welfare grants and greater transparency with Centrelink and other support providers.

In her only policy relating to international students she calls for greater working rights for students, citing continuing issues with underpayment.

Kumar eschewed tradition by not running for Council member, saying

she ‘wanted to be a people’s president’ and that the role would be a ‘conflicting interest.’

saying it had heightened his awareness of the ‘inaccessibility of ANUSA elections.’

history of financial management. It was for the student body to decide what’s important when they vote, Kay said.

‘I’m not in the mood to do a balancing act between the two policies’.

‘People have been really unnecessarily mean and malicious during these elections, and that does a disservice to the whole student body,’ Allan told Woroni.

She said this was her fourth student election and one of the nicest she had been involved in.

Both Kay and Allan are also running for the ANU Council position, saying it was integral to maintain the power and knowledge the role provides to ANUSA. Allan said if the role was split ‘all of that conversation and all of that knowledge and all of that hard work is lost.’

He said it was integral to use the discussions prior to and within Council to inform ANUSA discussions and generate feedback ahead of time.

Kay hoped to expand the power of ANUSA within the ANU’s committees and Council. She hoped to become ‘meaningful partners in decisionmaking.’

She cited the changes in the University Education Committee, where students are now partners in decision-making rather than just consultees.

Allan said he had ‘absolutely loved working with the Shake Up team’,

‘Myself and Shake Up are now very committed to reforming elections next year, and we are committed to holding ourselves to a high standard of behaviour.’

Allan criticised Woroni for not publishing his whole statement on his financial management skills. Allan said he had ‘successfully attained the most sponsorship ANUSA has ever seen in both O-Week and Busk Week.’

‘I provided comment to Woroni … about my financial wins, and they were not included in the article. If there is a trust issue amongst students, it’s because they do not know the full story,’ he said.

But Kay said that she thought this election had felt a lot nicer than previous years’ and that it was not her role to ‘run a smear campaign against Cam’ on his

‘It takes a lot of guts to run,’ she said. ‘It should be a space for critique of policy, not people.’

‘I decided to run because I’m tired of seeing qualified women not putting their hand up to run for elected positions. Over my past three years with ANUSA, I’ve seen plenty of mediocre men jump to stand for elected position, and plenty of slaying women doubt their own competence.

‘Over the past four years, eight men have run for president, and only one woman. President isn’t a man’s job, and if by running I can encourage other women to stand up, then that’s a win for me,’ Kay said.

CONTINUED PAGE 4

Issue 9, Vol. 67

News comment 10

Gone Phishing: How to Avoid Getting Hooked Nick Sifniotis 11

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Tips for a Good Handover Holly Zhang 26

What Can We Learn From Corbyn and Sanders?

Dom Cradick

Departments Should Be More Than An Afterthought Laura Perkov

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features

Libraries Exist That Aren’t Chifley and Hancock: A Complete Rating of the Lesser Known Study Spots Yashi Kotnala 13

Ignorance Is Strength Anonymous 14

No Hate Mail Interview with Martin Elliffe Noah Yim 15

Interview with Katrina Millner Noah Yim 16

The Argument for an Australian Republic Bentan Honeywood 17

Don’t Let Hacks and Sycophants Ruin What Already Works Adam Cass INTERNATIONAL 18

Coming to Terms With ‘You Are What You Decide’ Boya Li 19

Globalisation and International Organisations in the Trump Era Josie Ganko MULTILINGUAL 20

Jigsaw Moments Cherry Zheng

Student Activism in Myanmar Mani Bovell

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Taking On The Perspective of Others Jess Barallon 30

Colourful Places And In-between Spaces Julia Faragher

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Introduction Charlotte Goodman 22

‘Amateurs Talk Strategy, Professionals Talk Logistics’: In Conversation with Dr John Minns Lorane Gaborit 23

An Ineffective Activist Anonymous 23

The Postal Survey: An Unideal Path to Marriage Equality Lachlan Deimel The ANU Women’s Department: Then and Now Laura Perkov

The Future of Retail Nick Blood

We acknowledge the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people, who are the traditional owners of the land on which Woroni is written, edited and printed.

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We pay respects to Elders past, present and future.

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We would also like to acknowledge that this land – which we benefit from occupying – was stolen, and that sovereignty was never ceded. Within this ongoing echo of colonialism we commit, as writers and editors, to amplify the voices and stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people at our university.

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We will honour the diversity of their stories.

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Lessons From the Credit Crunch Vikrum Sithambaram The Prisoners’ Dilemma Viv Duong How Machine Learning Will Predict Your Next Moves Rohit Ram 44

Thank Me AfterPay-ing For This Stock Albert Patajo creative

Board of Editors

Editor in Chief: Kanika Kirpalani Managing Editor: Kat Carrington Deputy EiC: Nathalie Rosales Cheng Content Editor: James Atkinson Radio Editor: Oscar Jolly TV Editor: Linda Chen Art Editor: Zoe O’Leary Cameron News Editor: Jasper Lindell

staff and Sub-Editors

Denis Lissogourski, Matthew Teh and Jenna Hoy 40

Contact

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Holding Out for A Hero Miriam Sadler 33

Are Video Games High Art? Nick Blood Life & Style 34

To Braddon And Beyond Casley Rowan 35

Like Long Distance: How to Keep Close When You’re Far Apart Anna Fox 36

A Different Style of University Life Michael Fairlamb 37

Yarn Bomb Katie Ward environment 38

Sustainable Campus Bulletin Grace Dudley Do Something Today for A Greener Tomorrow ANUgreen

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Reflections Mahalia Crawshaw 45

To Have Succeeded or Not In Sleep A Little Fuji Apple 45

Perspectives Holbrook Spartan sATIRE 46

Chronic Over-Committer Promises ‘Never to Put Herself Through This Again’ While Writing an Application for the Federal Law Review Zoe Saunders 46

ANUSA Probity Officers Unveil Bold New Plan to Curb Oversealous Campaigning in Union Court Cormac Relf 47

The Blue Bus is Callin’ Us, Driver, Where You Taken’ Us Liam King 47

Sudoku Sebastian Rossi 48

Science

Privilege, Position & Possums: What You Need to Know About the ANUSA General Elections Gene Pinter

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The Threat of Geological Hazards to Australia and its Neighbours: Investigating Geological Hazards with Professor Phil Cummins

Preserving Cultural Diversity Brody Hannan Business & Economics 41

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acknowledgement of country

Admin Assistant: Arun Murali Financial Controller: Brendan Greenwood Business Development: Jonathan Tjandra Marketing: Nicole Jackson Social Media: Daniella (Sunny) Tan Instagram: Fernando Goh Comment: Ruby Smyth Comment: Noah Yim International: Una Chen Features: Olivia Ireland Multilingual: Rosalind Moran Creative Writing: Georgia Leak Creative Writing: Prischa Ochan Arts: Ben Lawrence Reviews: Phoebe Hamra Life & Style: Nick Wyche Environment: Grace Dudley Science: Matthew Teh Business & Economics: Victor Sukeerth Munagala Business & Economics: Nivedita Shankar Sport: Adam Mayers Satire & Humour: Elizabeth Harris News: Isabella Ostini News: Lorane Gaborit News: Max Koslowski News: Isabella Di Mattina-Beven News: Luke Kinsella News: Josie Ganko News: Aleyn Silva Executive Producer: Loretta Lackner Presenter Liason: Annika Law Radio Technical Officer: Will Fletcher Music & Events: Eilish Hensman Marketing: Ollie Brown Design: Rowan McGinness Producer: Imogen Purcell Producer: Zoe Halstead Producer: Steph David Producer: Iona Rennie Producer: Sonja Panjkov Art & Design: Katie Ward Camera Operator: Bremer Sharp Camera Operator: Shasha Ma Camera Operator: Ruben Thompson Camera Operator: Lachlan Townshend Camera Operator: Jeongyeon ‘Judy’ Shin Reporter: Casley Rowan Reporter: Elvis Gleeson Reporter: Ajai Samra Reporter: Reza Mazumda Photography: Daniel Greiss Photography: Chloe Tredea Photography:Zayana Zaikariah Photography: Christine Song

art

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sLactivism vs activism pull-out

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The CBA: Will it Stay Australia’s Best Known Bank?

Neeraja Shankar

Cryptic Crossword NWJ 48

Meme

correction

It has come to the attention of Woroni that in the Contents of Volume 67 Issue 8, the article titled ‘Interview with Tanika Sibal’ was credited to Kat Carrington and Cameron Allan. This is incorrect. This article was contributed

by Freya Willis. We apologise to Freya Willis, Tanika Sibal, Kat Carrington and Cameron Allan for this error.

Phone: (02) 6125 9574 Shop 15, Lena Karmel Building 26 Barry Drive, Acton 2601 Woroni is printed by Capital Fine Print.

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Woroni is powered by the bottomless salt reserves of the Woroni Board of Editors.

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Week 5, Semester 2, 2017

HACKERS WITH RUSSIA LINK TARGET ANU Text: Jasper Lindell

Recent email phishing attacks on ANU staff and students have been traced to Russia, leaving open the possibility the hacks are originating from Russia, Woroni has learned.

But these attacks are fairly rudimentary, ruling out the possibility they are statesponsored or linked to groups which targeted Hillary Clinton’s US presidential campaign last year.

The phishing emails sent to ANU staff and students work by directing students to log into a fake website, which then records the login credentials which hackers can use to gain access to

the email system and distribute more fake emails.

Woroni understands that both students and staff have been compromised.

The group has also targeted the University of Miami, Yahoo email accounts and customers of an online banking portal for an American bank.

The cyber and digital security manager at the ANU, David Howse, could not be reached for comment before deadline. The ANU did not respond to questions before deadline.

Professor Roderic Broadhurst, a criminology and cybercrime expert in the Research School of Social Sciences, told Woroni that the Russian connection

seemed likely in this case ‘although proxies and false flags are commonplace.’

Broadhurst said that universities were often ‘common targets’, but that ANU IT Services does a ‘good job of fending off various attempted intrusions, however, some phish intrusions are successful because they deceive a user to open a compromised email, social media account or visit a dodgy website.’

‘While students may be at risk as potential vectors for third party or insider intrusions, they are generally not a high priority – perhaps because they don’t have fat bank accounts, however many online scams do trick students into paying rental

bonds, employment or work from home scams,’ Broadhurst said.

But Broadhurst played down the risk posed by such attacks on sensitive research areas.

‘Sensitive research areas are generally not connected to the internet and operate in an encrypted environment, however, once again social engineering can compromise a user who may unintentionally download spyware,’ he said.

Broadhurst said that some nations – including Russia, China, North Korea and the United States – have allegedly engaged in ‘patriotic hacking’.

‘Some state actors engage criminal actors or proxies to conduct these sorts of activities but turn a blind eye as long as these cybercriminals target outside the state,’ he said.

ALYSSA SHAW RE-ELECTED AS PARSA PRESIDENT

Progress ticket takes all but 5 positions in general election Text: Jasper Lindell Alyssa Shaw will serve another term as the postgraduate students’ association president, after Progress candidates won all but five positions in elections for 2018.

But the important general secretary position has gone to former PARSA president, Chris Wilson, who ran on the ANyou ticket, after he was elected following a tight race with Aaron Wilson of Progress. Chris Wilson won by 21 votes, 336 votes to 315.

Shaw beat ANyou’s Paul Taylor by 188 votes, 435 votes to 247. Shaw will also serve as the postgraduate ANU Council member, beating Chris Wilson by 83 votes. Shaw received 362 votes, Wilson received 279 and the independent candidate, Zhizhen (Jayson) Liu, received 53.

Progress ran on a platform which included ‘transforming and introducing new community initiatives and events; introducing robust governance, accountability and policy measures; [and] running the largest ever postgraduate survey in order to understand the needs of the community.’

The Progress ticket candidates pictured during the campaign

pointing to the small margin which cost Progress the role.

‘Just because you’re elected on a different ticket, doesn’t mean anything. We all work together, and I hold everyone to the same expectations in their work, behaviour and conduct. We’ll make that very clear and work through it,’ Shaw said.

Shaw told Woroni over the weekend that Progress had a clear mandate to implement its policy platform, but she was disappointed on the roles the ticket missed out on, as it was felt by the team which had been working closely together. But, Shaw said, Shaw said she was looking to see the ‘feeling from the team is very commitments from the ANU on family positive.’ accommodation for postgraduates by the end of the year, and said she She said losing the general secretary expected an announcement on the role was ‘particularly difficult’, virtual hall for postgraduates.

‘We’ll also be working on discussions surrounding sexual assault and harassment,’ Shaw said.

inducements on Chinese social media platform WeChat in exchange for votes surfaced during the campaign.

Many Progress candidates did not achieve large majorities over their ANyou rivals, often scraping to victory with a dozen or so votes.

Turnout was low across the elections, however. Only around 10 per cent of the postgraduate student population voted in the elections.

Progress was also warned after thanking students for attending a PARSA-run Friday night drinks event and not making it clear that the event was not a Progress-run campaign event.

ANyou’s candidate for education officer, Aries Meng, was disqualified and the candidacy declared ‘null and void’ after an allegations of offering

Shaw defended the Progress ticket.

‘Progress members were wearing badges with our team name, and were talking to students,’ she told the ANU Observer last week.

NEWS

Issue 9, Vol. 67

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STAND APART, ACTIVATE CLASH OVER NUS Text: Luke Kinsella

factionalism in the NUS prevents delegates from representing students.

Nick Douros’s Activate ANUSA and Ashish Nagesh’s Stand Apart are the only two tickets in the ANUSA elections made solely of general representative candidates. But that’s about the only thing they have in common.

He said that if elected NUS delegate, Stand Apart will go to the NUS as independents and not be tied down by an already powerless Liberal faction.

But Douros is confident that Activiate’s ties to the ALP won’t affect how they operate on the SRC and said that any suggestions to the contrary are ‘ridiculous.’

In recent weeks, the two tickets have clashed on the topic of the National Union of Students (NUS).

Stand Apart has ties to the Liberal Party, with Nagesh serving as the treasurer of the ANU Liberal Club.

Activate has ties to the Labor Party, with six of 14 of its candidates being ALP members. Douros is also the 2016 NUS ACT Branch President and said he is a ‘proud member of the Labor party.’

Nagesh criticized Douros’s role in the NUS, saying ‘he’s apart of the swamp of people that embody the unprofessionalism and the mismanagement of the NUS.’ Speaking to Woroni, he said the NUS is a ‘breeding ground for Labor politicians’ and strong

Set for a close result, campaigns enter election week

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

The campaign has also seen renewed focus on the role of general representatives within ANUSA, with two tickets – Stand Apart and Activate – fielding a slew of candidates for the positions.

Stand Apart, which has advocated disaccreditation and then ultimately disaffiliation from the NUS with occasional mixed messaging, has strong links to the ANU Liberal Club.

The ticket convenor, Ashish Nagesh, is the treasurer of the club.

Meanwhile, Activate ANUSA’s ticket convenor, Nick Dourous, is a senior campus Labor Right figure and the NUS ACT branch secretary. Six of Activate’s 14 candidates are members of the Australian Labor Party.

Another semi-rogue element of the campaign has been the independent bid by Sebastian Rossi, the president of the Men’s Network, for the ANUSA vice-presidency. Rossi has faced harsh criticism.

‘There are student associations around Australia which have 50 per cent ALP members on the SRC and they still do fantastic work,’ he said.

At the NUS delegate debate last week, Nagesh said Stand Apart supports ‘disaccreditation’ from the NUS. But on Stand Apart’s website, it says they support ‘disaffiliation.’

Disaccreditation refers to withdrawing the membership fee ANUSA pays to the NUS every year, whereas disaffiliation involves taking ANUSA out of the NUS altogether.

‘I actually don’t think [Nagesh] understands the definition of those two words. It shows their lack of understanding of the NUS,’ Douros The convenor of the National Labor Students faction in the ACT, Dom Cradick, said that Rossi had ‘absolutely no chance’ of being elected.

‘He hasn’t gone to SRC meetings, he doesn’t understand ANUSA. Clearly this person shouldn’t be vicepresident,’ he said.

But Rossi remains confident, prepared to work with whomever is elected president. He told Woroni over the weekend that he had run a campaign that tried not to ‘annoy people accidentally.’

‘I don’t want to harass people with f liers and posters,’ he said. He said he was considering sitting on a stall during the election week, inviting students to approach him to engage with his policy. ‘I’m trying to try something different,’ he said.

Rossi channelled Robert Menzies’ ‘forgotten people’, saying he held support with students who don’t usually vote in ANUSA elections and who ‘aren’t currently involved’.

Rossi said he had ‘no idea how much support I have.’

He said – as a Left-leaning Centrist – he appealed not only to International students, but to those who lean to the Right.

The presidential debate revealed the many similarities between Lift and Shake Up policies, both hoping to address accessibility of ANUSA, communication, support of College Reps and structural reform to ANUSA. Lift ANUSA’s policies focus strongly on improving the efficiency of ANUSA

said. ‘At the end of the day, a lot of them are Liberal Party members.

They’re not interested in students and their government isn’t interested in students. The only thing they’re interested in is making sure student unions aren’t that strong.’

Nagesh told Woroni that Stand Apart’s ultimate goal is disaffiliation, but disaccreditation is the first step toward that. ‘I would ask ANU students, do you really think your SSAF money is going to the right place, could it go to somewhere else that could benefit you further, like mental health services or improved parking?’

sometimes violent behaviour.

Stand Apart supports livestreaming the yearly NUS conference to show how ‘unprofessional and mismanaged it is.’

‘Our ticket asked Nick [Douros] to pledge for video filming in the NUS, but he said he wouldn’t…I’d like to know if he’d vote against his own Labor faction to allow filming at the NUS,’ Nagesh told Woroni. ‘His faction votes against filming every year.’

Douros argued that ANU students need to contribute to a national union that represents students’ interest.

‘What Stand Apart doesn’t understand is that sometimes a national body does better [than university-specific unions],’ he said.

Douros concedes that some of the behavior at the NUS conference is ‘unacceptable’, but still thinks it’s necessary for ANU students to have a say in NUS decision-making. He did concede at the NUS debate that livestreaming the NUS conference needs to be ‘looked into’, but is concerned that some speakers won’t want their speech to be live streamed around Australia.

Nagesh wants to see greater transparency in terms of budget allowances, travel reports and financial reports. He also said that footage leaked from the yearly NUS conference has shown delegates engaging in inappropriate and

Speaking to Woroni, Douros slammed the Stand Apart campaign, saying ‘every candidate that’s criticised the NUS this year hasn’t even bothered to talk to me once. As a member of the governing body, I find that ridiculous.’

and secure financial longevity. A key policy spearheaded by prospective Lift treasurer Lewis Pope hopes to diversify revenue streams of ANUSA so it is less reliant on the federal government’s whims on SSAF.

would require a mid-year review. She said that ‘communication was the key’ and proposed ‘regular meetings outside the SRC space.’

Shake Up has focused on expanding the role of ANUSA to include greater advocacy for an ethical and inclusive campus, under a banner of ‘creativity and vibrancy’. This incorporates accessibility of events and more nuanced policies relating to engagement, inclusion and support for international students.

A topic of debate was greater support for college representatives, as seven of 12 college rep representatives resigned over the course of 2017.

Kay said she was keen to celebrate the successes of her representatives and work consultatively with them.

‘Cam said I was one of the most consultative people on the executive,’ she said.

Allan was quick to say that he would also celebrate college representatives successes. Shake Up has policies on project-based honoraria to support their activities, and hopes that general representatives would also pick up the slack during busy periods.

Another topic of debate was the relationship ANUSA has with their departments.

Both tickets agreed that they would sit down early in the year to note points of collaboration and to set out expectations.

Kay suggested that the situation

She also signalled that the SRC would be a key space for reform continuing into next year, following on from the SRC Working Groups initiated by the current general secretary, Kat Reed.

This included an external review of the SRC, and a general governance review promoted by Eden Lim, Lift’s general secretary candidate.

On this issue, Allan hoped to diversify the way information was disseminated to students.

However he acknowledged that ‘there are a lot of structural issues with how students see themselves as part of ANUSA’.

Kay remained hopeful the SRC would be ‘the fundamental space’ because ‘some issues aren’t able to be simplified to an infographic’.

Shake Up hopes for social events to be more sustained throughout the year, and for greater support of clubs and societies in hosting events. They hoped to engage off-campus students by diversifying venues and providing off-campus events, part of their postUnion Court strategy.

They hoped to communicate social events more effectively through an app, following failures this year to create an integrated online calendar of events.

Undergraduate students can vote online between 9am Monday, 21 and 4pm Thursday, 24 August.

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Admissions changes focus of education debate Text: Luke Kinsella

Candidates for ANUSA education officer, Lift ANUSA’s Harry Needham and Shake Up ANUSA’s Makayla-May Brinckley, discussed proposed changes to the ANU’s admission policy at a debate last week.

Needham, pictured left, is currently a general representative for ANUSA and has experience working in activist roles as a member of the Refugee Action Committee and was an attendee at the NUS’s Education conference.

Brinckley, pictutred right, is the current Indigenous officer for ANUSA. She was also a member of the organising committee for the Network of Women’s Students Australia and ANU’s delegate to the World Indigenous Peoples Conference on Education in Canada.

Needham opened the debate, declaring that the Lift’s ‘education policy is based on the fundamental truth that education is a right and not a privilege.’

Brinckley emphasised the importance of ‘accessible and equitable education.’ She noted that students from low-SES backgrounds often find it difficult to apply to university, and face barriers once accepted.

Needham agreed, saying, ‘We need

to put equity at the heart of changes to admissions.’ He mentioned the ANU’s green paper that outlined four potential admissions models.

He endorsed elements of the ‘National Model’, which proposes that the top three students from each high school around Australia receive an offer.

Brinckley proposed putting a student on the working group currently discussing the changes to admissions. Needham questioned the necessity of this change, claiming the vice-president already does an adequate enough job on the working group. Brinckley said she thought a regular student would provide a more diverse perspective.

Both Brinckley and Needham disagreed with the proposed changes to the HECS repayment threshold.

Brinckley called the proposal ‘atrocious’. She said it would prevent university graduates from making

sound financial decisions. She also stressed the importance of accessible advocacy in ensuring the government changes their mind. ‘It’s important that we mobilize as many students as we can,’ she said.

Needham proposed making these complex issues relating to education policy, digestible so that lessinformed students understand the policies’ implications. Brinckley agreed, promising simple and understandable explanations of these issues, in plain English.

The discussion ended on the topic of Brinckley’s proposal of a mandatory indigenous education course, taught

by Indigenous academics. Brinckley is of Indigenous heritage. ‘I can only applaud this proposal,’ Needham replied — an Indigenous studies major himself. The two candidates both expressed confusion as to the lack of Indigenous lecturers teaching Indigenous courses at ANU.

A Brief History of Student Politics at the ANU Across Australia, student politics – or stupol – has a reputation for being a bit insane. Over at the University of Sydney in 2015, police were called to a Students’ Representative Council meeting after the electricity was deliberately cut off, and a phone was stolen. In the same year, the University of Queensland saw a ticket campaign under the name ‘University of Queensland White Student Union’ – unlike some of ANU’s joke tickets, this one was dead serious.

But because students are in and out of university in 3-5 years, a lot of the wackiest stuff has been forgotten. I took a dive into the archives to look at student politics over the past couple of decades, and here’s what I found.

The battle over NUS affiliation has been going on forever In 1992, with President Amanda Chadwick, ANUSA held a universitywide referendum on whether ANU should be affiliated with the NUS. While only 1426 students had turned

REMEMBER TO VOTE IN THIS DISPLAY OF POLITICS UNTAMED

COMMENT

INTERESTING, IDIOTIC & ILLEGAL

Text: Max Koslowski

NEWS

Week 5, Semester 2, 2017

out to vote on who should be President of the students’ association that year, more than 2500 students voted in the referendum - one of the largest turnouts to a student vote ever held at ANU. The vote failed, with 1500 students voting against affiliation. But that hasn’t stopped NUS affiliation being a key element of debate in the stupol scene ever since – particularly this year, with one ticket mounting its case almost wholly on disaffiliation from the national union.

Wadgate!

In the dead of the night, just days before the end of the 1996 election period, a hooded figure allegedly stuffed 146 faked ballots into the metal ballot boxes (yes, this was back when there were still physical ballot boxes) that were propped up in Union Court. The finger was quickly pointed at the Liberal Party-aligned ‘Rage’ ticket – the ballots were all in favour of that ticket – but nothing was ever proven.

Mystery surrounds the actual circumstances of those 146 sheets of paper: those that accused the ‘Rage’ ticket of misconduct pointed to the fact

that all of the ballots were right next to one another, and that they all had very similar signatures. But fingers were also pointed at the opposing ‘Counterattack’ ticket – with some arguing that they had framed ‘Rage’.

Regardless, ‘Counterattack’ went on to win the election by a large enough margin that even if the ‘Wadgate’ ballots were counted, ‘Rage’ would still not have won.

You might not like Woroni now – but at least we follow the law The year 1998 will go down in history as the year Woroni faced a defamation lawsuit, and accusations of sexism and homophobia against students at ANU. This was back in the days when Woroni Editors were elected as tickets, alongside ANUSA, in an often highly political way.

Students got pretty angry at this alleged act of defamation, and so did ANUSA – they set up a special committee that year which had to admit and oversee every single article that Woroni published, to make sure that something like this never happened again.

Text: Jasper Lindell News Editor Student elections are the maddest, baddest, loosest, most unhinged form of politics still found festering in the Australian landscape.

This is politics untamed. Politics on the edge. Politics undiluted. This is politics without media managers and focus groups. This may be the most real taste of politics you’re ever allowed.

If you’ve been caught up at all in this campaign, which has seen Shake Up’s Cameron Allan style himself as a party president to Lift’s tenacious and formidable Eleanor Kay, you’ll probably have some inkling about how you’ll vote this week.

If so, excellent. Go and vote.

If not, please read on.

Yes, student politics matters. It may not matter to many people outside the Acton postcode, but if you’re an undergraduate student who’ll be around the ANU next year, policies which have been been styled on BuzzFeed and discussed on Tinder in recent weeks will inform decisions which will affect your time at university.

It’s very easy to switch off from all of this madness, but it’s worth investing a little time into considering why these fellow students want to throw themselves into student governance and advocacy.

They all have the best interests of the student body at heart. They differ in just how they want to go about this.

Allan has vowed to lead a more ‘vibrant’ and ‘creative’ student association, while Kay seeks to continue to tackle tough dilemmas facing ANUSA at the ANU in a time of accelerated change.

Both Kay and Allan are progressives.

They believe in equity, equality and making sure everyone’s time at university is accessible and productive and rewarding.

Consider, too, options for general representatives. Who would you like to hold your president and executive to account? Your vote can be valuable.

Make it count.

There are two very good choices for president. You have to work out which one is excellent.

Then vote for them.

Issue 9, Vol. 67

NEWS

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Mental health dominates vice-presidential debate CW: MENTIONS OF MENTAL ILLNESS Text: Isabella Ostini Debate about how to improve mental health on campus dominated discussion between the vice-presidential candidates last week, with Lift ANUSA’s Tess Masters and independent candidate Sebastian Rossi clashing over the causes of student mental ill-health.

Masters and Rossi are joined by Shake Up ANUSA’s Maddison Perkins as the candidates for ANU Student Association vice-president, a role focussed on mental health advocacy, academic appeals and other internal educational issues.

Responding to a claim by Rossi that

REVENGE PORN OUTLAWED IN ACT

academic studies are the main cause of student stress, Masters said that the comment was ‘astonishingly misinformed’, pointing to financial pressures, difficulties with relocation and cultural differences as further major contributors.

‘That’s just a total misrepresentation…

I’m not sure how you’re supposed to be focused on when your assignment’s due when you can’t make rent for the month,’ she said.

Masters said that she would focus on improving mental health literacy for students and staff. She also advocated for peer-based communication, like the programs run by Batyr, over the university’s current focus on peer-based support, which she claimed is ‘exploitative’, ‘leaving a lot of students traumatised on both sides.’

Perkins, who is the current chair of the mental health committee, spoke on the need for more counsellors at the university’s counselling service, arguing that the expanded welfare centre, to be established in the redeveloped Union Court, ‘doesn’t help students now’ and suggesting that at least one culturally and linguistically diverse counsellor would ease wait times and make counselling services more accessible to international students.

She also said that Shake Up would seek to standardise procedures for mental health disclosures and create a standardised measure of student mental health, as well as seek to take a ‘proactive view towards bettering the lives of students.’

Rossi said he would focus on establishing better crisis support lines for students,

and, although stressing that he would leave his position at the Men’s Network and ‘try to be as unbiased as possible’, said he hoped to see an increased focus on men’s mental health issues.

Other issues raised by Rossi included improving ANUSA’s support for independent candidates through ‘checks and balances’ to eliminate a ‘clique’ which led to ‘support [for] a certain individual over others’, and creating a Centrelink and ANUSA liaison and advice service.

Masters added that she would combat the glorification of ‘busy culture’ around student leadership, and advocate for workplace rights, while Perkins spoke of creating a better sense of belonging and community on campus.

ALTERNATIVE REVENUE DEBATED FOR ANUSA

Text: Jasper Lindell

Distributing an intimate image without consent is now a criminal offence in the ACT, after an ANU postgraduate student’s petition saw an accelerated process which fast tracked new laws with cross-party support in the Legislative Assembly.

Rhys Michie launched a petition in March which reached 520 signatures, compelling the ACT Legislative Assembly to discuss legislating against the distribution of so-called ‘revenge porn’.

Michie’s petition attracted the support of the Greens and the Liberal Party.

Five months after the petition was launched – the fastest turnaround on this type of legislation in Australia – the Legislative Assembly unanimously passed a Liberal bill with Labor amendments which makes it an offence to distribute, or threaten to distribute, an intimate image with consent.

Offenders could face a three-year gaol term or a $45,000 fine in the broadly defined legislation which has been designed to capture changes in technology and all possible types of distribution.

The legislation also makes no distinction between distributing or threatening to distribute. A person can be charged for threatening to distribute an image even if there is no image.

A court can order the destruction of an image, and a recurring penalty will apply if a person does not destroy the image.

Michie said he was surprised by the bipartisan support and willingness of different political parties to work together on this issue.

‘The government, opposition and ACT Greens all said that the consultation process had improved the quality of the law. They all agreed that our institutions worked well to collaborate in order to quickly pass this reform. Each party said this was a good law,’ Michie said.

A screengrab from the Woroni TV live stream of the treasurer and general secretary debate last week

Text: Josie Ganko Debate among the candidates for ANUSA treasurer focused on alternative revenue streams for the student association, at a roundtable discussion last week which gave students a chance to engage with candidates for ANUSA’s next general secretary and treasurer.

On the panel were the general secretary candidates: Eden Lim (Lift), Bolwen Fu (Shake Up) and Howard Maclean (Independent); as well as treasurer candidates: Mariah Chang (Shake Up) and Lewis Pope (Lift).

The debate among treasurer candidates focused on Lift ANUSA’s policy for generating non-SSAF funding for ANUSA, with the examples given for potential revenue-raising including a coffee shop or shop-front.

Chang of Shake Up suggested there was no real grounds on which to fear SSAF being cut, and that Shake Up’s approach would focus on giving the government no reason to cut SSAF rather than investing in diversifying ANUSA’s revenue.

still a relatively new policy, and that the coalition government has floated the removal of SSAF. He emphasised that these initiatives would not be able to replace SSAF in the short-term, instead they would create longer term back-ups if SSAF ever was to be cut in the future.

Both candidates said they felt that vital services, such as the counselling centre, should not be funded by SSAF, and that the ANU should take over funding of such services to ensure their security.

The theme of the roundtable for the general secretary candidates was quickly established as engaging students in the ANUSA process, with the focus on SRC meetings.

The general secretary candidates agreed that the current structure of the SRC meetings is not conducive to student engagement, with the run time often reaching 3-4 hours, and students being generally disillusioned by the process.

While Chang did suggest she would look into further sponsorship opportunities as treasurer, she does not believe that any other revenue stream could replace the $2 million received from SSAF.

Eden Lim of Lift ANUSA suggested streamlining SRC reports and prioritising important issues to encourage engagement. She also emphasised the need to bring more definition to the general representative position and to make SRC reporting more streamlined and efficient.

Lift treasurer candidate Pope suggested a cut to SSAF was not totally out of the question, pointing to the fact that it is

Bolwen Fu of Shake Up ANUSA suggested utilising infographics to summarise meeting discussions, as well as listing

a range of different ways to engage students with ANUSA, including Shake Up’s policy to develop a centralised app for information on ANUSA developments. Fu also focused on the need to include information in various languages to engage international students.

Howard Maclean pointed out the need for housecleaning of the ANUSA constitution, while also criticising Lift’s policy of bringing in an external body to review the SRC decisions, suggesting an internalised review would be more appropriate. Maclean also noted the need to bring more attention to the ANUSA sub-bodies such as the clubs council.

All of the candidates expressed their approval of the move adopted in the last SRC meeting to create a progressive speakers list, which gives preference to marginalised groups in the SRC speaking order.

The candidates used their closing statements to emphasises their points.

For the treasurer candidates, Chang promised to work on student connections with employers, while Pope committed to safeguard ANUSA’s future and engage students in the process.

As for the general secretary candidates, Fu stated he would use multiple platforms to engage students, Maclean pointed out that his impartial position as an independent candidate is important, while Lim emphasised the efficiency she would bring to the role.

7

NEWS

Week 5, Semester 2, 2017

Woroni reporter LUKE KINSELLA compares the policies of the two major tickets, Lift ANUSA and Shake Up! ANUSA

STILL NOT SURE WHO TO VOTE FOR?

Mental Health and Sexual Assault

•

Collaboration with the ISD to improve mental health literacy.

• Social program to address ‘culture shock and language barriers’.

• Built-in wellbeing advice into the curriculum for all undergraduate courses.

• Pressuring the ANU to accept the demands made by ANUSA and PARSA.

•

O-Week

•

• Centralisation of information regarding O-Week into a comprehensive guide.

• Creation of an ANU Orientation 2018 Facebook Page and a Calendar app.

• Bringing first year students together by hosting first-year only events across colleges.

• Live-streaming of Monday Induction session and catch up induction programs for students who missed them.

• Recruiting student volunteers to communicate with incoming students via email/phone.

‘Stronger orientation programs, earlier.’

Creation of a compulsory Mental Health Module on Wattle.

• Publishing of a ‘visual tracking mechanism to measure ANU’s progress on (ANUSA’s) demands’ regarding sexual assault policy.

• Equipping ANU computers with the f.lux program, which dims the brightness of screens.

• Preparing for the potential loss of SSAF, by creating non-SSAF revenue streams, like shopfronts and coffee stalls.

• Campaign for workplace rights.

• Improving sending efficiency, ensuring that the $2 million ANUSA receives from SAFF annually, is spent in it’s entirety.

Education

• Financial support to a wider array of students.

• Engaging with ISD and DSA to improve the accessibility of student activism.

• Protests and campaigns aimed at the ACT and Federal governments.

• Accessible and digestible presentation of information.

• ‘University-wide academic peer-mentoring program.’

• Mandatory indigenous education courses.

• Ensuring the Education review is completed in 2018.

• Opposition to the lowering of the HECS threshold.

• Opposition to casual staff contracts for university staff.

• Organization of accessible advocacy events. e.g. art installations, visual stunts and more digestible explanations of complex policy issues.

Admissions

• Opposition to changes to HECS repayment threshold.

• Putting equity at the heart of admissions.

• Endorsement of the National Model in ANU’s Green Paper.

• • •

ANUSA Governance

• A review into peer-support programs at the ANU. • Better training for student leaders.

• Ensuring peer-support leaders are ‘properly remunerated and supported.’

• Governance review in 2018.

• Rotation of times for SRCs.

• All ANUSA representatives should be allowed to speak to the media, as long as it’s clear that their statements aren’t necessarily the official opinion of ANUSA. • All statements on behalf of ANUSA would be have to be approved by the SRC. • Would allow to college representatives to take leave of absences from their position, instead of having them resign altogether.

• Creation of an ANUSA ‘shopfront’, where departments can sell merchandise for campaigns.

• Creation of a ‘centralised, convenient, and accessible’ ANUSA app.

• Creation of a feedback platform

Housing

• Protests and campaigns aimed at the ACT and Federal governments.

• Student should be able to rent out ANU-bought houses at a subsidized price.

Residential Halls

• A survey into residents’ experiences.

• Public consultation between residents and decision makers.

• Proper training for student leaders.

• Elect not an ANUSA SRC representative to advise the president on matters relating to the Inter-Hall council.

• Giving students more of a say on the design of new residences built by ANU.

SSAFF & Finance

Emphasis on equity and diversity – moving away from ATAR-based system.

New scholarships must be equity based.

Opposition to changes to HECS repayment threshold.

Issue 9, Vol. 67

NEWS

8

ANU RESEARCHERS TRIAL INNOVATIVE ONLINE MENTAL HEALTH PROGRAM CW: MENTIONS OF MENTAL ILLNESS Text: Luke Kinsella Researchers at the Centre for Mental Health Research are currently trialling an innovative, online program designed to assist ANU students with mental health problems. Called the ‘Uni Virtual Clinic’ (UVC), it represents a giant leap in the field of mental health treatment on Australian university campuses.

The UVC will be designed to act as the ‘go-to’ hub for students seeking help. Where it differs from other online mental health services is that it is directly tailored to university students.

The project manager, Lou Farrer, said that existing online mental health services aren’t specific enough to cater to the unique stresses university students experience. ‘We found that university students are a really neglected population,’ she said.

The UVC will be able help sufferers of the most common mental health problems on campus, which Farrer’s research finds to be: depression, eating disorders, substance abuse and anxiety. However, the program will seek to address a wider range of issues as well, including: stress, procrastination, homesickness,

financial issues, sexuality, gender, relationships and insomnia.

Farrer is personally very invested in the success of the project. ‘I have a strong interest in getting help to people struggling with mental health problems, who don’t access it,’ she said. University students are a demographic she’s identified as particularly problematic in this regard. ‘We know that help-seeking among university students is lower than other young people their age,’ Farrer said.

This is largely because students are either uninformed about mental health services on campus, nervous about discussing personal mental health problems with a stranger or reluctant to publicize their struggle and accept the stigma that comes with it, she said.

‘There’s another proportion of students who do seek help, and when they do, the existing campus resources, while excellent, are often overburdened,’ Farrer said, noting that waiting lists and a lack of available counselors often stall the help-seeking process for ANU students.

The UVC aims to address these problems. The program will be completely automated, meaning there won’t be any human interaction when using it. This will allow the service to be available at all hours of

BILL SHORTEN FACES PROTEST AT CAMPUS EVENT Text: Luke Kinsella The federal opposition leader, Bill Shorten, faced Socialist Alternative, Refugee Action Committee and National Tertiary Education Union protesters at a campus event held by the ANU Labor Student’s Club last Wednesday.

After a ten minute speech, Shorten opened the floor to a Q&A. The first question was asked by members of the Socialist Alternative and the NTEU, who attacked Shorten over his stance on offshore processing and asylum seekers.

The protesters reminded Shorten of the death of refugee Hamed Shamshiripour in early August. Shamshiripour was found dead under Australia’s supervision on Manus Island.

After speaking for a few minutes, one of the protesters asked Shorten: ‘Are you spineless or racist?’ Another protester interjected while Shorten was speaking, saying, ‘Refugees set themselves on fire!’

They also accused Shorten of lying.

After Shorten and the protesters argued for a few minutes, the protesters began a loud chant, preventing any discussion from occurring. Shorten

resumed his seat as they ‘Free, free, the refugees!’

screamed:

The protesters left the event and the Q&A was allowed to resume.

‘It’s not a mystery why they’re not winning the public debate,’ Shorten said of the protestors, to the amusement of the audience.

After they left, Shorten addressed some of the protesters’ concerns. He said that it was an issue that 1,200 refugees died at sea between 2007 and 2013, when the Labor government at the time relaxed Australia’s policy. ‘If we knew that at the AFL grand final, 4000 people would die we’d probably cancel the match,’ he said.

Shorten also criticised the Liberal government, saying the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, ‘couldn’t find the sensible centre with a GPS.’ He also discussed his disapproval of the postal vote on same-sex marriage, calling it ‘grotesque’, ‘weak’ and a ‘waste of money.’ He also said that it will give license to ‘hate speech’ and be a green light for homophobes to voice their opinion.

Labor Party politicians Andrew Leigh, Gai Brodtmann and Katy Gallagher were also present.

the day with no waiting lists, making for a speedier process for students seeking help.

we link people to appropriate faceto-face services if they score really highly on the quizzes.’

In order to use the program, students will have to create their own personal online account, which they’ll have the option to create anonymously.

It’s anonymity and lack of human interaction might ease the nerves of students who’ve never sought help for mental health before.

Farrer said that in future versions of the UVC, she hopes to make ‘emailtherapy’ with therapists a feature.

‘We’ve designed the Uni Virtual Clinic so that it’s accessible to students with low-levels of mental health literacy,’ Farrer said. It will give students access to a wide range of useful resources, such as: information sheets about particular mental health problems, online therapy modules and cognitive behavior therapy.

Though the program is not publicly available to all students at the moment, Farrer and her team are currently running a pilot trial to ensure the program actually helps students. They’re looking for a couple of hundred ANU students to participate.

The success of the trial will help attempts to secure funding for the UVC into the future. ‘We’d like to roll this program out to all students eventually, but we need funding to do this.’

And instead of students being in the dark about where to go for help, the UVC will signpost them to the resources relevant to them, personally. Students will have access to quizzes that check symptoms.

Once completed, the quizzes recommend coping mechanisms or if serious enough, point students to ANU counseling services or other relevant resources.

Farrer hopes that by integrating the UVC into the ANU’s health services, the university will become a leader among Australian universities in the field of mental health treatment and research.

But Farrer said these resources don’t replace face-to-face help. ‘It can’t, and it shouldn’t,’ she said. ‘We’re very careful in making sure that

Those who want to join the trial can do so at: https:// anu.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/ form/SV_enE9nvEGrghzRFr.

‘The Queer* Community is hurting’ as postal plebiscite likely to proceed Text: Josie Ganko The acting vice-chancellor, Professor Shirley Leitch, has written to the ANU community encouraging them to vote in the voluntary postal plebiscite on same sex marriage, while calling on the ANU community to be ‘mindful’ of the campaign.

After two failed attempts to pass a plebiscite bill, the federal government confirmed that a non-binding voluntary postal plebiscite will be held on marriage equality. It is currently being challenged in the High Court.

Australians will be asked: ‘Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?’

The campus response has been overwhelmingly one of disappointment and frustration.

The deputy queer* officer and candidate for 2018 queer* officer, Matthew Mottola, told Woroni that the queer* community ‘is obviously hurting’.

‘We’re furious that this has happened in the first place. The discourse is already vile, pointed, and disrespectful, despite assertions from the government,’ he said.

While Mottola fears the plebiscite will

exacerbate the range of issues that queers* already face, he stressed that they cannot afford to boycott the plebiscite.

Leitch’s email encouraged everyone to check their enrolment and update their details.

‘While participating in this survey is not compulsory I encourage any member of the ANU community who is eligible to vote to take the opportunity to have their say,’ Leitch wrote.

Furthermore, Leitch also expressed concern as to the discourse that could result from this plebiscite, asking ‘everyone to be especially mindful of how comments and opinions may affect others’.

‘We should always remember to treat each other with respect and dignity.’

Those eligible to vote have until 24 August to enrol, in order to be included in the vote, which is expected to take place from 12 September when the form will be mailed to all registered and eligible Australian voters, contingent on the outcome of the High Court challenge.

Mottola finished his statement with this damning assessment: ‘The plebiscite is liable to make [the queer* community] another statistic. Malcolm Turnbull has to bear the consequences of this divisive plebiscite. This will be his legacy.’

9

NEWS

Week 5, Semester 2, 2017

‘STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE NORTH KOREAN BOMB’

ANU experts weigh in on the threat of North Korean nuclear strike Text: Isabella Ostini Although they disagree on the extent of a nuclear North Korea’s threat and the solution, a group of ANU defence experts agree on one thing: resolving the North Korean situation will require more than demanding the regime give up the bomb.

Woroni spoke to Professor John Blaxland, Dr Stephan Fruehling and Dr Benjamin Zala this week following heightened tensions between the United States and North Korea over a potential nuclear threat to the US territory of Guam.

Professor Blaxland, channelled the 1964 Stanley Kubrick film Dr Strangelove, saying he thought the world should ‘learn to stop worrying and love the North Korean bomb.’

He argued that winding back its nuclear program is ‘the last thing in the world’ the North Korean regime would do.

He said that it was highly unlikely that North Korea would carry through on its threats to attack Guam, especially since Resolution 2371, unanimously passed by the United Nations Security Council on August 6, ‘really sent a strong message to Kim Jong Un to pull his head in.’

On the other hand, Dr Fruehling said it was ‘quite conceivable’ that North Korea would fire a missile in the vicinity of Guam, although a direct attack was unlikely.

The Licorne Test: In 1970, the French detonated a 914-kiloton nuclear bomb on Fangataufa in French Polynesia

either a direct or proxy confrontation between the United States and China cannot be ruled out.’

‘When you are sitting in Pyongyang, Australia just doesn’t feature,’ he said.

the hardest (but not impossible) thing for a leader to develop in world politics – empathy.’

‘It also puts extra strain on US alliances with Japan and South Korea,’ he said.

He also criticised those eager to ‘attribute the basest motives’ to the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, regarding his statement of support for the United States.

Professor Blaxland and Dr Fruehling agreed that deeper negotiations were essential. ‘I do not think that the situation will get resolved until North Korea and the United States commence negotiations on a peace agreement ending the Korean War,’ Dr Fruehling predicted.

‘One reason why the Korean situation is so dangerous is that it seems quite conceivable that miscalculation could lead to a major war,’ he said.

Professor Blaxland disagreed, noting that the ‘substance [of the US counterthreats] didn’t back the rhetoric,’ and pointing out that in the aftermath of peak tensions, the US and China are communicating better, while the South Korean government is also friendlier to the US.

Dr Zala said that a major danger was that ‘the situation threatens the stability of the United States-China relationship’ and that the ‘prospect of

As for the danger to Australia?

Professor Blaxland said he thought fears for Australian security were ‘a bit of a beat up.’

‘People have failed to make the distinction between rhetoric that is committing to an act today, and rhetoric that is hypothetical, for the purposes of deterrence,’ Blaxland said.

On resolving the conf lict, Dr Zala said that ‘both sides have the ability to deal with the root causes of each other’s fear, but doing so requires

While agreeing, Professor Blaxland had little faith that the ‘concerted effort’ required from the region’s major powers would come easily.

‘I’m not going to hold my breath,’ he said.

ANU awards Indigenous scholarships to Medical School

Text: Aleyn Silva

The ANU Medical School awarded Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander scholarships on Friday, 18 August, which provide fee assistance and acknowledge the academic effort and excellence of Indigenous students.

It was in 2011 that the first Indigenous student was accepted into the ANU School of Medicine, who later graduated in 2015. There are currently eight Indigenous students enrolled in the School of Medicine, with a further two graduates since 2015.

The John James Foundation Award was presented to Stephanie Pollard by the chair of the John James Foundation, Professor Paul Smith. The John James

Foundation aims to provide opportunities for medical, post graduate and PhD students.

Pollard, 22, is a Wailwan Woman who graduated with a Bachelor of Science in 2016.

The Peter Sharp Scholarship was presented to Harrison Slockee by the ACT minister for health, Meegan Fitzharris.

The Peter Sharp Scholarship aims to adhere to the vision of the ACT Health’s Reconciliation Action Plan, to further encourage Indigenous Students enrolment in Medical Education and furthermore assist Indigenous people to have a quality of life, mortality and health equal to all individuals.

Stockee is a descendent of the Bundjalung people of Northern New South Wales. Harrison was educated in Canberra and recently graduated Charles Sturt University with a Bachelor of Medical Radiation Science.

The National Indigenous Medical Scholarship was presented to Cree De Clouett.

The National Indigenous Medical Scholarship is intended to assist students undertaking medical study.

De Clouett is a descendent of the Wadi Wadi people, whom are situated West of Swan Hill Victoria, towards Ouyen and south of Robinvale and additionally encompassing the Murray River. De Clouett studied at the University of Wollongong and graduated with a Bachelor of Health and Medical Sciences.

Got a news tip?

Email news@woroni. com.au

Issue 9, Vol. 67

COMMENT

10

GONE PHISHING

How to avoid getting hooked Text: Nick Sifniotis As regular posters on Schmidtposting will know, the university has been targeted by online cyber criminals in recent months. They have been trying to lure us, students and staff of this university, into divulging the login credentials that we use to access ISIS, Wattle and Outlook. A small group of students, including a recent graduate, and a researcher at the ANU Cybercrime Observatory, has been investigating these attacks. We have chosen to publish this information in the hope that by raising awareness of these phishing attacks, we can decrease the likelihood that you will fall victim to them.

What’s going on?

Email scams have been a part of life for decades. Spam emails, promises of wealth and fortune, winnings from lotteries that you never participated in, and phoney job advertisements are as ubiquitous as Facebook and Twitter. The vast majority of these emails are sent out en masse, to millions or billions of email addresses at a time. The spammers do not need many victims to turn over a profit; a response rate as low as one in twenty thousand is more than enough.

What we’ve seen over the last few months is different. Cyber criminals are attempting to steal login credentials from as many ANU people as possible.

They then use these credentials to send more scam emails out from the email addresses owned by their victims – the reasoning being that you are more likely to trust an email from another ANU student.

We are not sure why they are targeting the university; there are some possible motives.

- Surveillance of academics and/or students, - Economic espionage, - Intellectual property theft,

- Good old fashioned financial fraud.

In our research, we have found that in other high-profile hacks, spear phishing attacks generally represent the first stage in a concerted assault on an organisations’ computer systems. For example, spear phishing was used by Russian state actors to gain access to the Podesta emails in March 2016. Some of our academics have been targeted with sophisticated spear phishing emails, carrying a poisonous malware payload, which does lend some weight to the theory that external agents are attempting to gain persistent access to the ANU’s networks.

What do we know?

The short story is that, based on the evidence that we have collected, we believe that a group of cyber criminals are deliberately targeting the ANU. We can reveal that this cyber-criminal claims to be a Russian national based in Moscow.

We’ve been collecting these phish emails from victims, and analysing them. We found that the quality of the language used, and the ‘story’ or hook, varies from email to email. They range from the very basic ‘You have unread messages in your ANU mailbox,’ that is sent to everybody, to very sophisticated spear phishes emails targeting a specific academic, as mentioned above.

The software which the criminals are using to steal login credentials are standard, off-the-shelf scripts. They are hosting these malicious scripts on compromised web servers. We do not know whether they compromised these web servers themselves or bought access to them off the dark market.

These attacks appear to be rather unsophisticated. The criminals have made basic mistakes; for example, in one attack, we were able to shut down the malicious website and obtain a list of everyone who had fallen victim to the scam.

This included some senior academics and administrators, who were quickly telephoned and advised to change their passwords.

In other cases, we were able to obtain the email addresses used by the criminals, and then followed these to a social media profile that appears to be owned by one of them. Attribution is a tricky business. From our research, we understand that this cyber-criminal claims to be a Russian national based in Moscow. It is entirely possible that the profile is a fake, but given the relatively unsophisticated nature of these attacks and the errors alluded to above, we consider it unlikely that the profile has been set up with the intent to deceive investigators.

How to prevent getting scammed ITS work hard to block scam websites, but they aren’t always able to respond before you open your email.

Your best defence is to assume that every email is suspect. Email is still not a secure form of communication, and it is a trivial matter to send an email that appears to have come from someone else’s email address. In our Observatory, we have the ability to send emails from any ANU email address we choose.

To steal your username and password, cyber criminals will often create fake copies of websites you know and use in your day to day activities. They rely on your not noticing that the website that opens in your browser is not a legitimate website. Fortunately, it’s easy to tell when you’re looking at a fake – if you know what to look out for.

Always check that the web address in your browser is correct. ANU websites have addresses like https://isis.anu.edu. au, http://wattle.anu.edu.au, or https:// outlook.office.com/owa for your emails.

Compromising these sites is incredibly difficult, so instead scammers create replicas of these sites with obfuscated web addresses.

Here, for example, is one of the sites that we use for our research in the

Observatory. (it won’t harm your computer, but please don’t log in) http://wattle.anu.edu.au.cybercrime-observatory.tech The most important part of the web address is the right-hand side. If it doesn’t end with ‘anu.edu.au’, it’s very likely to be fraudulent. Some browsers, such as Chrome, will automatically highlight the relevant part of the web address for you.

Sometimes the URL that you see in the email you receive will be disguised to look like a legitimate website address (http://isis.anu.edu.au), but the website that loads when you click the link is a dodgy phish website (http://isis.anu.edu. au.cybercrime-observatory.tech).

They might use a web address that looks very similar to a legitimate address. For example, www.annu.edu.au, or www. micr0soft.com. Again, they rely on your not noticing that the address is slightly wrong.

These emails almost always contain some ‘call to action’. They’ll use different types of emotional manipulation to get you to respond, including - Direct threats (‘Your account will be shut down, click here to verify it is still active’), - Fear (‘Your account is compromised, click here to reset your password’), - Confusion (‘You owe us money. If you believe there has been a mistake click here to report it’), or - Surprise (‘Click here to claim your free Ed Sheeran tickets’) If you suspect that you may be a victim of an online scam, change your password immediately and notify ITS by calling their service desk on 6215 4321.

Our research into these attacks is ongoing. If you receive a phishing email, please forward it to us at cyberobs.anu@ gmail.com.

11

Week 5, Semester 2, 2017

COMMENT

Departments should be more than an

afterthought

Text: Laura Perkov The Departments are a huge part of what ANUSA does, but are often also misunderstood by those outside of the Departments – both in ANUSA and the wider student body. Stand Apart, and Sebastian Rossi of Vision for ANUSA (Stand Apart’s main policy writer, before leaving the ticket after its launch), have released a policy on General Representatives pairing up with the Departments to collaborate on campaigns and advocacy efforts. This policy focuses on advertising of Department initiatives, awareness, and a lack of work for General Representatives as the issues that this arrangement would fix. This policy misunderstands how the Departments function within the SRC, what Officers and Collectives want and need out of their Departments, and the role of the SRC in supporting this work.

So, what is the role of a Department?

In short, they provide pastoral care to their members, do advocacy within the ANU, and facilitate the autonomous collectives. Officers often give students referrals to professional services. The autonomous collectives allow students to meet other people with experiences and identities that are both similar and different to their own, learn from each other and create a community. Departments run campaigns, utilising the skills and ideas of collective members to raise awareness or advocate for specific issues. This semester the Women’s Department is campaigning in conjunction with ANUSA and PARSA for

sexual assault policy reforms following the release of the AHRC Survey – this is a strong example of how the wider SRC can support and communicate the work of the Departments. The SRC is generally great at spreading awareness and publicly being involved in campaigns and advocacy work. Advocacy pertaining to minority groups should not solely fall on Department Officers, but involve the wider SRC and student body – because these issues are important to address holistically and institutionally.

Departments and other student groups can always do better with communicating with others on campus, but a quid-pro-quo partnership agreement with General Representatives is not the solution. The issue is not communication with SRC – Officers already make reports to the Student Representative Council detailing the activities of the Department, progress on campaigns, and even expenditure. An Officer will make social media posts about notices of the Department events meetings as well as agendas and meeting summaries or minutes. These are available to any member of the Department. Campaigns are also heavily promoted on social media and in-person. The issue is with wider student engagement – Departments are not immune to the issues of communication and engagement that impact ANUSA, but this policy tackles this from the wrong angle. Sebastian Rossi argues that ‘people interested already know, but the point is to expand to [the] people that don’t.’ The proposed policy would not achieve this – as it stands, it would fragment and

confuse the roles assigned to Department Officers and General Representatives by giving General Representatives the responsibility of reporting to SRC on the work of the Department and vice versa. It is part of the Officer’s role to be an active member of SRC – by both engaging in issues that affect the student body at large, and by reporting on their own Department.

The work of the Departments is generally autonomous, and any work with other groups would have to be in line with this. The proposed policy is problematic in this respect, and the prospect of General Representatives who are not part of Departments doing the work of Collective Members in organising and advertising campaigns is quite confusing. Would the General Representative be working with the Officer or the Collective? How would this be different to what Collective Members and student representatives already do informally?

What are the Departments expected to do in return? What happens if there are no General Representatives elected that are part of certain Departments – for example, the Indigenous Department?

Sebastian Rossi has stated that it may not be mandatory for the General Representative to attend Collective Meetings – but they ‘certainly should know what’s going on and communicate it’.

This adds another unnecessary layer to communications, making it more complicated to disseminate information to the SRC and the student body effectively. The Officer would have to relay the outcome of the meetings to the General Representative, who then has to represent these views and interests to others

– instead of the Officer or the relevant Collective/Committee Member doing so.

Vision and Stand Apart believe that they know what’s best for the Departments. They say this without consulting or engaging with the Departments and running candidates who claim they are active members without attending any meetings. Even current Department Officers can see the flaws: Rashna Farrukh, the 2017 Ethnocultural Officer, says that ‘the policy has shortcomings in that it shows a lack of interaction with the Departments and understanding of the issues the students they represent face in the first place.’ It seems that they saw two ‘loose ends’ of the SRC and tried to tie them together, without regard to concerns of autonomy and how the arrangement would work in reality.

This is not the ‘best alternative’ as Sebastian Rossi claims – rather, we must involve the Departments and their Officers in the discussion of how we can better integrate and communicate their advocacy in the SRC and the wider student body.

The Departments are for the communities they represent and advocate for – not for General Representatives who feel like they don’t have enough to do, and not as a way for StuPol hopefuls to make it seem like they have our best interests at heart.

Stand Apart could not be reached for comment.

Laura Perkov is the 2018 Women’s Officer.

Issue 9, Vol. 67

COMMENT

12

Libraries exist that aren’t Hancock and Chifley

A Complete Rating of the Lesser-Known Study Spots Text: Yashi Kotnala Law Library I don’t do law because I don’t hate myself, so I’ve never been to this one, but I pass it on the way to my Sociology lecture.

Once, I saw someone run out crying.

An hour later, I walked to the bathroom across the hall and saw them emerge bleary eyed and defeated. It was only when I turned to lock the cubicle door behind me that I noticed horrific etchings on the door and broken fingernails strewn across the floor. As I sat doing my numbers, it dawned on me that these weren’t just random markings but a series of letters – A, G, L, C. I don’t know who that is, but if you’re reading this AGLC, you’re a major asshole.

Another time, someone walked out with so, so many books in their tote bag. As I walked into my lecture theatre, I heard a scream from the foyer. I can only assume it was their shoulder popping out of its socket due to the sheer weight of these books.

I give this library an ‘I’m not sure, but it terrifies me/10’.

Arabic Library – Centre for Arabic and Islamic Studies It is one room. There is a table. There is a computer. The lady at the front desk pretends you don’t exist, which, depending on what you need, can be a good or bad thing.

Final thoughts: It exists, so you should check it out, but don’t bring a friend. They won’t fit.

Art and Music Library – School of Art I walked into this library a few days ago for the first time in many months, and I instantly felt my creative juices flow. Only later when I reached for my laptop, did I realise that pasta sauce had leaked in my bag and what I felt was probably just Passata dripping down my back.

The Art and Music Library is much smaller than its counterparts with only one floor, but what it lacks in space it makes up for in ambience. Floor to ceiling windows on one side allows natural light to flood in, while warm, golden hues from the hanging lights give the impression that the library has permanently set itself to bedtime f.lux mode. There is a computer lab just opposite the library entrance, and a few more computers are at the back of the library.

Art and Music library gets a ‘Hallelujah/10’.

Menzies Library The staff tell me that some of the chairs on the ground floor are heritage listed.

How exciting! Unfortunately, that’s about as exciting as Menzies gets.

It smells slightly mouldy (probably a result of the heritage listed chairs) and it’s so quiet that it’s actually a little disconcerting (granted I’ve only been there

twice, and both times after 5pm).

There are four floors, with computers on the ground floor and a computer lab on the second. Desks are spread out, with large group desks in the main study foyer of each floor and singular study nooks on either side of the bookshelves, along the edges of the walls. Where other libraries have apparently decided to deny the existence of plug points, Menzies has devoted itself to the cause. Everywhere you look there are vacant plug points ready for the prongs of your charger to be inserted therein. Even each study nook has its own! What a miracle.

I rate it an ‘I’d come here again if it wasn’t so far away/10’.

Wood Library – Forestry Building I realise that you may not believe me, but this place does really exist. It’s a library in the same way the Centre for Arabic and Islamic Studies library is a library.

Except this one is so much better, not only because you can bring your friends, but also because, instead of books, there are entire shelves packed with blocks of wood. Where did they come from? Why are they here? Do more ever get added?

Are they made to look like the spines of books or is that just a coincidence? Why is this random room full of timber classified as a library? These are just SOME of the questions you can ask and not have answered at the Wood Library.

This one gets a ‘heck yeah/heck yeah’ for existing.

13

Week 5, Semester 2, 2017

COMMENT

Ignorance is Strength Text: Anonymous There are significant levels of apathy among university students. This issue is striking considering the prevalence of issues such as the threat of North Korea, the European migration crisis, the Syrian Civil War and non-violent crises such as climate change. There are three major social developments to blame for this plague of ignorance: representation of news in the media, limited sources of information, and political correctness.

The sensationalization of the news media is a hindering factor on social awareness. Many news sources choose to sidestep serious issues, such as the weakly veiled justifications for foreign military aggression in Syria and Iraq. Instead, they opt for over-coverage of celebrity culture and pandering to non-issues such as slights against feminism and gender identities. For example, the media often attacks Donald Trump’s character – treating him as a media spectacle due to his exaggerated statements. Instead, the media should be critically discussing the political consequences – whether positive or negative – of Trump and the Republican Party. The media also tends to merely scratch the surface regarding the factors behind crises or chooses to skew their representation heavily. Therefore, they often fail their ultimate task of educating the public and promoting intelligent,

constructive social discourse.

People have followed suit and copied the media’s superficial approach regarding social issues. It is hard to discuss matters such as politics or religion because people turn a blind eye to serious issues, choosing, instead, to divert their attention to unimportant, but easy non-issues. Even when such matters are brought up, people are usually uninformed regarding the issues.

Therefore, it’s perceived as culturally inappropriate to discuss politics in everyday conversations. Instead, adopting passive aggression while merely mimicking interest in some superficial cause has been deemed a socially appropriate method of acting.

Ignorance is further encouraged through a social breakdown, ref lected in increased hookup culture and pornography, which discourages interaction due to there being no need to seek out sexual satisfaction. Similar fragmentation occurs affects all age ranges. It is not just millennials) but the older generations who are misinformed, whose information is often sourced only from workplace chatter and mainstream media. People tend to reject other valid sources of information in favour of living in a happy reality.

Even when people make an effort to educate themselves and act accordingly, their efforts are marred by political correctness. Contemporary society has a bad habit of prioritising people’s feelings over the underpinning issues that actually matter. This has resulted

in an overly politically correct culture; if one raises problems such as infertility or obesity, for example, there is a large amount of backlash. The shortterm, Orwellian solution has been to continually remove words from our vocabulary until legitimate criticism has been neutered, for example, the complete restructuring of the logical, traditional concept of genders.

To use the previous example, studies have shown that obesity in women results in hormonal changes and reduces their fertility. However, the media does not cover these issues out of respect for people’s feelings, instead blaming the issue on men becoming infertile for ‘unknown reasons’.

We must enact countermeasures to these widespread issues imminently.

This can occur through several methods, such as focusing more on politics and less on celebrity life in the media - this has happened somewhat since Trump won the US election; due to his cult of personality and frequent use of social media, people are becoming increasingly aware of the contemporary American political situation.

Alternatively, society could emphasise traditional values, as has historically happened in the Western world with Christian beliefs, among other approaches. This would mean that people would stop worshipping Mammon and giving in to hookup culture, but, instead, focus on the less superficial aspects of their own identity, character, and soul.

There is an epidemic of apathy sweeping the Western world. It is perhaps ironic that the only institution capable of bringing that apathy to light is its key proponent of it – the media. In a bid to create a free world, we have created a terrifyingly effective censorship system, to which any voice of dissent becomes immediately muff led.

COMMENT

Issue 9, Vol. 67

14

Content Warning: mentions of mental illness, suicide, queerphobic rhetoric

no hate mail Text: Noah Yim Collage: Katie Ward

Martin will be voting ‘yes’ in the upcoming marriage equality postal survey.

How do you feel about the plebiscite?

I’m against it; it’s completely unnecessary. It’s a waste of money that could be much better spent, seems almost insulting to queer* people. The fact that you have to have a nationwide survey to ask whether your relationships are just as valuable as everyone else’s is quite degrading.

What do you think the Liberal government is trying to do here? What are their political motives?

I don’t buy their argument that they’re conducting a postal plebiscite because people deserve a say because there wasn’t a plebiscite when John Howard changed the Marriage Act in 2004, to specifically exclude same-gender couples.

Therefore, I think Malcolm Turnbull is trying to sort out his party room and

solidify his power base. Trying to keep his job, and trying to appease the farright of his party, who are trying to delay marriage equality. I think that they’re hoping that a lot of queer* people will, out of disgust, will just boycott it and that the plebiscite will yield a majority ‘no’ vote, and say that there’s no mandate for it, people don’t want it, and we’ll have to wait until Labor gets in for marriage equality to happen.

How about the proposition that this is actually a political manoeuvre to frustrate the efforts of the LGBTIA* community?

That’s exactly right – that’s what they’re trying to do; trying to delay it as much as possible because they’re opposed to it.

I’ll admit, a part of me, when I first heard of it, did lean towards the idea of boycotting. But logically, I think this is a time for us to speak out and make ourselves heard – this is something we do want. And, I think if we were to boycott the plebiscite, we would be doing precisely what the conservatives and the Liberal party wants and the outcome is going to be a ‘no’. Even if we did boycott it, and we made the argument that this plebiscite is not legitimate, the Liberal party would still say that the majority of Australia is against marriage equality – that there is no mandate for it, and it’ll just get pushed farther and farther back.

We are falling quite far behind, as the only developed

English speaking country to not have marriage equality.

Is there an accessibility issue, seeing as how youths are less accustomed to using the postal service?

I think there is a slight issue. However, I’m not 100 per cent convinced by the argument that young people don’t know how to send post – it’s not that difficult, and not that hard to find out.

And what of the argument that 16 and 17 year-olds should be allowed to vote?

I am supportive of it; they are the ones who are going to grow up in this, in a way they have more of a right than many of the elderly people who aren’t going to be around for much longer. They are the people who are going to be most affected by this since they’re the people who are looking to get married in 10 or so years’ time. That’s really the age where people start to discover their sexuality and is an important development period.

What do you think is going to be the impact of this on Australian society? Do you feel affected by the public discourse?

I do. That suggestion that Penny Wong addressed the other day regarding the comment comparing children of same-gender couples to the stolen generations, I found quite hurtful, and I think it’s only going to get worse as the debate goes on. I’m quite comfortable with myself, but I really worry about people who aren’t so comfortable with themselves, trying to come to grips with their sexuality. Living in a very supportive family, I never had to wonder whether my parents would be fine with it – they had gay friends, they had gay cousins. These toxic public debates really do have an effect on youths. During the referendum in Ireland, they saw an

increase in youth depression and youth suicide. I think here in Australia, particularly in rural communities, where there’s a pretty poor support system for young people coming to terms with who they are, it’s potentially dangerous.

Another popular argument that Australian society is built upon family structures, in which same-gender couples do not fit into, is quite ridiculous and hurtful. They are suggesting that a same-gender couple is less qualified to be parents than a heterosexual couple. In arguing this, many assert that children deserve to have a mother and a father; this doesn’t only attack same-gender couples but also single parents and their children too. And same-gender couples are adopting anyway. So, I think that quite frankly, it’s ridiculous, and that marriage equality would have almost the opposite effect; marriage would solidify families and make it more of a family-like environment.

And in regards to the religion argument, Australia should be a country where religion is separate from the state, given the last census revealed that most Australians do not identify themselves with a religion. In terms of the actual parliamentarians, politicians shouldn’t be arguing that they won’t be voting for it because of their religion because again, the church should be separate from the state. You don’t have to get married in a church, you don’t have to have a religious wedding; there is a fundamental difference between a civil and a religious wedding. I think marriage has become an idea removed from religion. It’s become a lot more about two people wanting to celebrate their love and commitment to each other.

Martin Elliffe is the ANU Labor Left Queer* Officer

15

Week 5, Semester 2, 2017

COMMENT

Noah Yim got in contact with the key political clubs on campus to discuss the youth perspective regarding the marriage equality postal survey. Here he chats with Katrina Millner of the ANU Greens and Martin Elliffe of ANU Labor Left. The ANU Liberal Club were contacted but they declined to comment.

Text: Noah Yim Katrina will be voting ‘yes’ in the upcoming marriage equality postal survey.

How do you feel about the plebiscite?

Really annoyed – it’s a bit of a joke; it’s not even a proper plebiscite since it’s not compulsory. I think that the Liberal government is trying to keep an election promise that’s not really a promise anyone cared about to begin with. It is obviously a political move rather than one performed with the actual intent of gathering the public’s voice about the topic of marriage equality. We already get the voice of electorate when we vote in the representatives anyway.

There have been two main propositions for the motivation behind this political move; firstly, to solidify power within the Liberal government, which we hear is currently divided, and secondly, to frustrate the efforts of the LGBTIA* community. Which do you think it leans more towards?

More towards solidifying power. Malcolm Turnbull is trying to keep the right-wing side of his party happy. It’s totally out of his normal set of values, which is disappointing. In the liberal party, you’ve got a side that is a little bit more progressive, which supports ideas like marriage equality, but then you’ve got a side which is more conservative, full of climate sceptics, and people who are anti-GLBTIA*. And Turnbull’s trying to balance them, which is not working particularly well.

Do you think that there’s motivation on the part of the Liberal party to frustrate the efforts of the LGBTIA* community?

Not massively – if anything it’s motivating us to be louder with our cause.

We’re always campaigning for marriage equality, but with the plebiscite coming up, those efforts have quadrupled within weeks. It’s not really messing with us as much as people think. Obviously, it’s annoying because now our campaigns are directed on a stupid survey that’s being done so that MPs can vote in our favour, so the focus has changed. But I think it has motivated some people who previously didn’t speak out to get involved.

This is a good opportunity to really get people engaged. Australia is the only devel-

oped English-speaking nation without marriage equality and we need to change that.

argument because in order to hear the voice of the whole country, you have to make it properly accessible to everyone.

There’s a lot of legal issues around this plebiscite. For example, Greens Senator, Di Natalie, noted that there is ambiguity as to whether 16 and 17 year-olds can vote. There’s also going to be a High Court hearing on the legality of this plebiscite.

What are your thoughts on it?

What do you think the outcome of this plebiscite will be, and what effects will it have on Australian society?

This is a postal plebiscite, and therefore, not something the legislature technically has to give assent to. However, they’re using the electoral roll, which is dodgy.

We also definitely need confirmation whether 16 and 17 year-olds can vote.

I think the government’s tried to find themselves a loophole, and then realised that that loophole is not in their favour, and now you’ve got the voice of a bunch of 16 and 17 year-olds who deserve to have their voices heard. This is why we don’t mix these things.

There’s also an argument saying that this postal plebiscite is not accessible enough, especially with younger demographics.

Do you think that there’s validity in this argument?

Completely. I’ve never posted anything.

I don’t know how to properly. I think we’ve got less and less postal services just because it’s less and less demanded.

Youth don’t really use the post, but, also, a lot of younger people don’t have set addresses. So picking one specific one just for some random ballot and having to be at that address to cast your vote is really difficult. It completely exempts all people that are travelling.

There have been rebuttals to this, saying that since the Liberal party couldn’t pass their original plebiscite through the Senate, this was the only choice they had. However, their original plan was a proper, compulsory plebiscite, which we obviously still oppose. What they’ve put forward now isn’t a plebiscite, it’s not what they said they were going to give us. And it’s strategic; you can see it being done so that the older voters, who are traditionally more conservative, are the voices that are going to be heard. And so, I think it sta nds as an

In the short term, it’s going to be incredibly damaging. It’s particularly dangerous for the younger members of the GLBTIA* community. Personally, I am very comfortably out, and some of the ‘no’ campaign’s content is even upsetting me. The idea that there are young people out there questioning themselves, seeing all that hate speech, seeing representatives questioning their own existence is dangerous.

I suspect that we will get a ‘yes’ vote, but it will be a tough campaign getting younger people engaged enough to go through the effort of picking an address and voting. You’ve already seen the Electoral Commission getting 200,000 new applications and change of addresses in the past week, which is pretty impressive. I think we will eventually see marriage equality but it’s really just a campaign that is going to severely impact the mental health of the GLBTIA community for a completely uncertain result. For a result that can be completely ignored by government and taken to another election to be used as a political tool. I predict that the Liberal party, in the next election, will

promise to take marriage equality to a conscience vote if elected in. They’ll continue using it as a bargaining tool.

But even in a conscience vote, their members won’t be obliged to reflect the will of the people. They’ll just be doing their own thing – following party lines.

Many people think that Australia is a progressive nation. I think Australia is more socially progressive than our policies reflect, but it’s more the economic conservatism that holds back the progressive policies. But looking at us globally, we’re very far behind, and we have no excuse. We’re a country with abundant wealth and knowledge, and we can easily push ahead, and be a leader in progressive global thinking.

Katrina is the Treasurer of the ANU Green Club

Around 14 per cent of young Australians are not currently enrolled to vote. This means that they will not be eligible to have a say in the upcoming marriage equality postal survey.

We know that this method is skewed toward an older demographic and we know that the question will be skewed toward a ‘no’ vote.

Enroll today so that you can have your say and so that queer* Australians can have the opportunity to say ‘I do’. You have until 24 August at 6pm to enroll or update your details with the AEC. Head to check.aec.gov.au.

Issue 9, Vol. 67

COMMENT

16

FOR

The Argument for an Australian Republic Text: Bentan Honeywood On 1 January 1901, Australia became a nation as a result of intense debate and a referendum. We have continued to shape our own unique identity; forging a path that started with Indigenous culture and continuing into, what looks like, an increasingly global present and future. We have constructed our own story, culture, alliances and partnerships – cementing Australia as a leader and important actor not only in the region but the global stage. So why is our head of state still the British Queen?

We have not had a prolonged debate on this topic since the referendum of 1999, but the time has come again for Australians to discuss the next fundamental step in our future.

It is clear why the British Royal family became our head of state after Federation. Our judicial and parliamentary systems are near replications of those constructed by the British, and most Australians still regarded themselves as British to some degree. But this is no longer true. In the World Wars, we entered as Australians and faced the dangers that threatened the globe. As ANZACs, we fought on the beaches of the Dardanelles, at Gallipoli. We marched up the Kokoda Track and protected our nation and neighbours from invasion alongside the United States. Inside our region, we’ve played an active role in

stabilising and aiding our neighbours.

And today we stand on the world stage as strong campaigners of liberal democracy and global order, fighting for ideals that even some of our closest allies seem to have rejected, such as free trade and action on climate change. So again, why do we have to swear allegiance to the monarch of a distant country?

What role does a monarch play in modern Australia? In regard to governance, none. But the extended royal family do sell magazines and provide fodder for the gossip columns. The head of state is a token figurehead, so let’s change this position. Let’s give it to someone who will represent Australia properly at home and abroad; someone who will genuinely represent all our diverse voices in a way that the British monarch never could. Instead, we are wasting the culturally valuable position of head of state. The only way to remedy this is to install an Australian head of state.

One can merely turn to the citizenship controversies occurring in Parliament House right now to further strengthen this point. If members of Parliament aren’t allowed to be dual citizens, why should our head of state be a citizen of a foreign country? And furthermore, why should these people who were elected to represent us, be forced swear allegiance to a foreign leader before being allowed to serve?

Furthermore, our devotion to the British Monarchy is repugnant to our democratic values. It should never be someone’s

birthright to govern Australia. We have removed the pedestal from royalty that for centuries wielded power based purely on bloodlines. How can we call ourselves a democracy when the highest office is never elected? Every child in Australia should grow up to believe they could be our head of state – not a prime minister, a so-called ‘representative’ of the Queen, but a president, a sole head of the executive arm of government, who represents the sovereignty of a state.

Imagine a future where an Indigenous Elder could sit in that chair.

As in any debate, there are obviously dissenting opinions. One such popular criticism is that it would degrade our relationship with the UK. Becoming a republic would not result in a complete severance of ties between Australia and the UK, but we would remain close allies. An example includes Canada, an independent nation which is still part of the Commonwealth, and have had more royal visits than Australia, yet the head of state is the president.

Another frequent argument relied upon by monarchists is that the government should be more focused on fixing important issues at home before worrying about something ‘trivial’ like becoming a republic. However, this assumes that the government is only capable of a singular or narrow focus when, in reality, it is a wide-ranging team capable of tackling many complex issues at a single time. And while a referendum may

be costly, the benefits it will award this country once passed outweigh this cost.

It would be an oversight to not mention the failed republican referendum of 1999 in this piece. It is often used to explain why another referendum isn’t necessary; that it wasn’t important to Australians then and it isn’t important now. This wasn’t the case; Australians voted no to a model of republicanism that was wildly unpopular, since it was cynically designed to fail by politicians such as John Howard, and was not an accurate depiction of what Australian society actually believed. To justly find out what the public wants, a proper public debate must be held, with the only true way of gauging its success being another referendum in its aftermath.

Overall, Australia has changed since Federation. We have matured and no longer need an out-of-touch monarch on the opposite side of the globe looking after us. British colonisation will always be a significant factor in Australia’s history, but that is where it must remain – history. Australia had civilisations long before the British and will continue to do so without their influence. We may be a multicultural nation, filled with many voices from many cultures, but we all speak as Australians. It is time that our head of state does as well.

Bentan Honeywood is a member of the Australian Labor Party.

17

COMMENT

Week 5, Semester 2, 2017

Text: Adam Cass The Departments are a huge part of Once again our enlightened political class has decided that the republican debate is to be resurrected in Australia. After another week of political dysfunction in Canberra, we have another reason to be wary of a republic: there is no way we can trust political hacks to devise a republican model that is better than what we already have.

The British monarchy is derided, and rightly so, for its immense privilege and wealth. Indeed, no one feels more strongly about this than the many republicans who gathered at the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne last month – as they sipped champagne and paid $300 to rub shoulders with the nation’s most elite politicians and businesspeople. Far from a mere semblance of a bygone era of colonialism, the modern constitutional monarchy is a bulwark against the influence of political dysfunction and privilege upon our political system while also providing hope and stability for a nation and its people.

The crux of the argument in favour of a republic is the notion that our head of state ‘ought to be an Australian.’ This, we are told, could come in many forms.

Speaking to that very gala last month, Bill Shorten loudly proclaimed ‘… we can vote for an Australian head of state without derailing the business of government, or the priorities of this nation.’

This is rather doubtful.

Replacing the constitutional monarchy brings great risk and little reward.

Whether through appointment or election, the head of state would no longer be a symbol of stability and neutrality that many Australians have grown to

love. Any republican model that callously discards the well-functioning system that currently exists would only bring with it the sort of uncertainty and political prejudice that Australians despise of existing partisan politics.

Imagine a figure like Bill Shorten, or perhaps Arthur Sinodinos, as our head of state. The options presented to the Australian public for the top job wouldn’t be national treasures like Cathy Freeman or Ita Buttrose, but rather two political hacks, endorsed by the main parties that we would be forced to pick between.

Even if we get the opportunity to vote in primaries for these parties, one can imagine that our widely-praised onemonth campaign could easily turn into ten. Or even worse – Australia could go down the same path as the United States did in 2016 and we could end up with President Malcolm Roberts by 2026.

Even with best case scenario for a republic in Australia, the Parliament would simply appoint a President or a Governor General to serve as head of state. But as soon as you remove the Queen from the equation, the non-partisanship and respectability long associated with Governor Generals such as Sir Peter Cosgrove and Dame Quentin Bryce would likely erode. How soon until the hacks in both parties appoint a politically motivated head of state, given the new weight and importance placed on that position?

How soon until a friendly donor gets the position, and we get to start singing praises for Governor General Gina Rinehart?

The constitutional monarchy is far from perfect but resolves these issues through established traditions and norms that ensure the independence of the Crown. The Queen is incorruptible and

AGAINST

nonpartisan – ironically, her wealth and privilege ensure that far wealthier and more privileged elites cannot co-opt the position and use it for personal gain. You won’t have Her Majesty using her position to construct hotels in Saudi Arabia and golf courses in Scotland.

The phrase ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ is thrown around a lot in this debate. But, for a nation that prides itself on progress and perpetual improvement, it is a rather unwelcome one. More accurately, the republican debate threatens to ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’. Of course, there are flaws with the Constitution that many Australians take issue with, such as a failure to recognise the First Australians and archaic laws on ‘foreign allegiance’ as the most recent dual citizenship fiasco revealed.

But why attempt to change arguably what is the most well-functioning part of our Constitution and our government system? The only discernible benefit is that we get to call our head of state ‘Australian’, and given the widespread affection and sense of relation most Australians currently have for the Royal Family – we aren’t gaining anything. Only unwanted risk.

Australians don’t want the same hacks and elites that sat in the Royal Exhibition Building last month to devise a flawed version of what already works.

If we can’t trust these same people with important tasks such as marriage equality, tax reform and housing affordability, how can we trust them with devising a workable republic?

Best to stick with what works.

Adam Cass is the Vice Chair of the ANU Monarchist Society

Don’t let hacks and sycophants ruin what already works

COMMENT // INTERNATIONAL

Issue 9, Vol. 67

18

Coming to terms with ‘you are what you decide’ Text: Boya Li You are what you eat, what you wear, what you read - you are the decisions that you make.

Last month, when I attended the conferral ceremony of my better half, I came across the Chancellor’s message’ in the graduation brochure – ‘behind every degree lies a tale of individual effort, sacrifice, and achievement.’

The sentence stayed with me. This week, I was eating hot-dogs with a group of students cheering for ANU’s birthday at the fellow’s oval, and those words struck me again. Looking upon these students, I wondered: what are the stories of this increasingly diverse student body? What sacrifices have we made or are making for education?

What do we hope to achieve?

It feels like a typical internal monologue of someone who is coming to the end of her school life. It’s like when you take a step back from the daily buzz and realise all these encompassing questions haven’t been answered.

I didn’t have a careful thought of this before I sat in two of my management classes, listening to lectures talking about making decisions as the primary activity of management. In a business context, there is a defined procedure of decision-making. It starts with defining problems followed by gathering intelligence, designing and weighing solutions, and ends with implementing and monitoring them.

We are told that with the rise of new machines, algorithms can now inform us to make better decisions. The fact that decision-making is a structured and increasingly evidence-based measurable science subject caught me offguard a bit. For me, decision-making has always been following gut intuitions, following someone’s suggestions or a mixture of both.

I couldn’t help start reflecting on my personal choices in class. ‘Was I making decisions in a well-informed and logical way?’ Ditching my job in Beijing to study something completely different in Canberra was my most recent big decision. How did I make up

my mind? In peak moments of mental tug-of-war, I resorted to flipism (‘a pseudo-philosophy of life in which the most important decisions are made by the flipping of a coin’). When the queen’s face turned up three times out of five flips, I was relieved. I think the coin understood my mind and pushed me towards the direction I was afraid to claim.

At that moment, it was the rosy picture that attracted me. The excitement of being immersed in an exotic environment to study something trendy (informatics) persuaded me. The possibility of being a part of a different story attracted me.

A year and a half later, that rosy picture dissolved into a mixed reality of rejoicing campus life along with some anxieties - the immersive experience in Canberra was friendly, but I still felt lonely from time to time. The courage to study something different meant it was necessary for me to commit more time and effort than I had expected.

On top all these, it was probably the frustrations over limited job prospects that took the heaviest blow on that rosy picture.

I think I was being impulsive and used ‘flipism’ to justify my instincts when making decisions. If I were to redo, I might still choose to study in an exotic environment, but I would spend more time in finding out things on the ground beforehand. If I had learned about the differences between the two economies (Australia and China), I would have been more prepared.

Admitting flaws and mistakes in decision-making takes courage. Another poor decision was the belief that my parents could make decisions for me ­­­­– It is one of the most deceptive falls.

In the second year of high school, I had to choose which pathway to follow. In China, we have to decide between the liberal arts (history, politics or geography) or the sciences (physics, chemistry or biology) as subjects for your university entrance examinations (the GAO KAO). Knowing so clearly that I would be good at and feel more comfortable at studying liberal art subjects and not the science subjects, I heeded

my father’s call to take science. ‘It’s a no brainer choice,’ he said, ‘studying science will prepare you for more job opportunities.’ I took his advice thinking that he must be right and know what is good for me.

The journey turned out to be challenging at best: arduous and discouraging at worst. I didn’t do well in the final exam. I studied liberal arts in college and became a reporter after that.

I guess what that experience taught me was that listening to my parent’s advice was also my choice. I was the one who made the decision, and ultimately, I have had to live with my choice. I figure there are a thousand mistakes to make when making decisions and we can always justify them however we want, given that we are still young and can afford to make poor decisions.

But what I’ve realised is that that might not be the case. Coming to the end of my study at ANU instilled in me a sense of urgency to think about my decision-making abilities.

In Meg Jay’s Ted Talk ‘30 is not the new 20’, she said society’s ‘benign neglect’ for the 20s is a real problem and has real consequences. What she meant was that it is important for the 20 something to realise that although they may dismiss decisions they made in their 20s as trivial, these very decisions are defining their lives.

I think it is very true. As someone who is about to graduate, I’m writing this not to preach the importance of making right decisions, but about the importance of making an effort for making good decisions. So by the end of your campus life, you’ll be more confident with your choices.

That may mean spending more time in finding out the right information or following structure for decision-making while following your instincts or even picking up some skills in using technologies if you want hard evidence to back up your decisions.

Don’t freak out by decisions you have already made. I think the answer lies in only waking up to the fact that you are the choices that you make.

19

Week 5, Semester 2, 2017

COMMENT // INTERNATIONAL

Globalisation and International Organisations in the Trump Era

Text: Josie Ganko Every year the leaders of the world’s largest and most powerful nations come together for a meeting – called the G20 summit. And, just as reliably, each year journalists and political scientists question the relevance of such organisations and what they actually stand to achieve. However, with the trend toward globalisation coming to a screeching halt, this issue is more important and relevant than ever.

It is difficult to pinpoint any tangible achievements by these organisations.

Whether it’s the G20, the G7 or the UN, goals and targets are often set but rarely met. The Millennium Development Goals, created in 2000, had lofty aspirations. They gave the world 15 years to eradicate poverty and achieve universal primary education, among other targets. While almost all of the eight problem areas identified by the goals saw improvements over the 15 years, only one was reached in terms of the numerical growth demanded by the goals. While some may argue that any improvement is success, it is doubtful that the UN can claim full responsibility for this success.

International organisations are often dismissed as useless, slapped with the

label ‘toothless tigers’. While they may have the participation and the backing of influential states, they lack power.

Seeing as these international organisations have no legislative or authoritative powers, they gain their legitimacy from the participation of important groups. As the global super power of the past 70 years, the United States has been a pioneer for international cooperation as the most important founding member of the United Nations and NATO. However, the US support of international cooperation, as well as their position as the world’s foremost superpower, has been called into question as of late.

Many suggest that Trump’s election marks the end of US global leadership, but the more important question is whether he is even interested in ‘leading the free world’ (so to speak)?

It seems that at this point Trump has little interest in being a leader in the international community. We saw this in failure to take any leadership at the G20 Summit where, before entering the negotiations, he said that he would discuss ‘whatever was on his mind.’ This admission led him resulted in widespread mocking from political and media leaders alike. Furthermore, Trump’s dangerous decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord signifies his lack of interest in cooperating with international organisations. While this

is in line with Trump’s ‘America First’ campaign strategy, the loss of cooperation from the United States threatens to destabilise the very structure of international politics.

While Brexit and Trump suggest some backlash against globalisation, this may just be a temporary trend. We have already seen an overwhelming sentiment of regret in regards to both those decisions – with UKIP all but disappearing at the June UK elections, and Trump having one of the lowest approval ratings ever for a first-year president. Similarly, France rejected the far right in the convincing defeat of Marine Le Pen and Gert Wilder’s Party for Freedom underperformed in the Netherlands. It is possible that the tide has already turned, and the anti-globalisation sentiment has already calmed in the aftermath of the European Migrant Crisis.

Even if this is the case, without an impeachment, there are at least three more years of Donald Trump being in control of the world’s largest military and economy. These facts will ensure the United States’ relevance on the global stage, despite Trump’s resistance. Although, we are yet to see the damage that he may cause to the already questionable effectiveness of these international organisations.

Issue 9, Vol. 67

PROMPTED // MULTILINGUAL

20

Jigsaw moments Text: Cherry Zheng Calligraphy/Illustration: Zoe O’Leary Cameron When I first found the dining hall next to my classroom in Peking University, I was so intimidated that I went back to my room and had bread instead. It was like entering a microcosm of the city, a rush-hour world of chopsticks and soap-smell and crowded tables where you sit shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers. A row of tags at each stall showed the dish options in a blur of Chinese characters. My mind would scramble to unpick them as the queue piled up behind me. Typically, by the time I had half made sense of the menu, the cooks would already be asking me what I wanted in their thick northern accents. They were brisk, and the queue moved quickly, and within all this my slow responses bordered on idiotic.

experience was present throughout my month at the Beijing summer school.

Unlike most of my peers, I passed as mainland Chinese. I spoke with an accent that indicated I was from Guangzhou, not Sydney. On the streets, people would ask my friends for photos; they would ask me for directions.

The plus side was how easily I could blend in. The city would just flow around me rather than stopping to stare. I could go where I wanted, order and buy what I felt like, without another Chinese-speaking person stuck to my side like a chaperone. I could talk to locals in their preferred language; at worst, they would treat me as a tourist from another part of the country. Unlike in Australia, where I was born and raised, I suddenly belonged without ever having to prove myself.

me questions about China I should have known the answers to, but didn’t.

When my eyes skimmed a block of Chinese words and I found I had to plod through, character by character, whereas I could zip through the same text in English in a heartbeat. I loved to think there was a place I could fit in like a jigsaw, but just as my upbringing and my appearance mark me as foreign in Australia, there are gaps in my knowledge that mark me as foreign in China.

Now, I find myself in a third place. I’m about to start a semester in Indonesia.

I’ve only just arrived, but I’ve come to think that there are labels we can’t entirely escape.

That’s absurd now. Depending on who’s looking, I’m the woman from the migrant family, the Australian-born Chinese, the foreigner, however many other labels a person might use to fit a name within their mental architecture.

So rather than depending on others to validate me, I might as well carve a space out for myself. A notebook and a pen, a seat to curl up in, a good chunk of time. A colourful street, with smells I can’t name and names I can’t spell. A circle of friends, where I can dip in and out, and otherwise just let their familiar voices wash over me like music. A house in Sydney where childhood memories emanate from every brick, with the table where I’ve had almost twenty thousand meals. These moments are easy to find – moments where I can say I ‘fit in’, whatever that means, when I’m completely at ease.

The essence of the dining hall

The down side was the shame. Those moments when people spoke to me too quickly, and I had to betray my incomprehension. When my peers asked

For the longest time, I assumed my experience in Australia was normal. She was from a rural background, he could trace his Australian-ness through generations of family here. But my life was the standard, because I didn’t know anything different.

我第一次走进我在北大上课时的教室

来的。在街上，路人会想跟我的朋友

文而不得不逐字逐句慢吞吞地读才能

在不同人眼中，我时而是来自移民家

一旁的食堂，就感到生畏得不由得跑

合影留念，而对我只是问问路。

弄明白时。这样的时刻很多。我多么

庭的女人，时而是澳籍华裔，时而是

希望世界上有一个地方能让我能像一

外国人，我都数不清他人能用多少种

回房间，吃以前买的包子。食堂仿佛 整个城市的缩影，一个匆忙的，充满

好处是，我很快就适应了在北京的生

筷子碰撞的喧嚣声和肥皂气味的世

活。城市的人流在我周围来来往往， 就像我的家教与外表让我在澳洲人眼

界，在拥挤的餐桌跟陌生人肩并肩坐

而没有人对我驻足凝视。我想去哪儿

中像个异国人，我在文化知识上的差

所以，与其让他人定义我是谁，我不

在一起。每个窗口前都挂着一排显示

就去，想吃什么就吃，不需要一个会

异让我在中国也像个异乡人。

妨为自己创造出一个属于自己的空

菜名的标签，一连串使我眼花缭乱的

说中文的人像个陪护人员一般跟着我

间。一本笔记本，一支笔，一把椅子，

汉字。我的脑子慌乱地解读着这些字， 到处走。我可以跟本地人用中文交谈， 现在我来到了第三个地方，即将开始

一些空余时间 ；一条丰富多彩的，充

身后的队伍越排越长。通常，菜单上

大不了就让他们以为我是从国内别的

在印尼读一个学期的书。我初来乍到

满说不出的气味与拼不出的名字的街

的菜名我才弄懂了一半，厨师就已经

省市来玩的游客。不像在我土生土长

就已经发现，一个人身上有不可逃脱

道 ；一个让我可以来去自如的朋友圈

的标签。

子，即使在我不需要他们的时候，也

在用浓重的北方口音问我要吃什么。 的澳洲，我没费什么劲就融入了这里 他们动作飞快，排的队也在迅速移动

块拼图一样完美地嵌入其中，但是， 标签来形容我。

的环境。

有他们温暖的声音像音乐般环绕着 很长时间以来，我以为我在澳洲的经

我 ；悉尼的一座房子，在那里的桌边

坏处也许就是羞耻感 ：人们说话语速

历是普遍的。她来自农村，他家几代

我吃过差不多两万次餐，每一块砖头

一快，我就暴露出了自己其实听得半

人都在澳洲生活，我的生活才是平常

都有着我童年的记忆。这些“空间”

在北京上暑期班的那一个月里，我在

懂不懂的实际情况时 ；当朋友向我问

的，因为我小时候并不知道其他的生

很容易就能找到，凡是让我能够完全

食堂的经历不断重演。不像我大多数

起关于中国的问题，我却回答不了时； 活是什么样的。

的同学，我看起来就是大陆人。我说

看见一段中文，我知道如果是英语我

话的口音更像广州人，而不像从悉尼

只需要扫一眼就能读懂，却因为是中

着，相比之下我的反应迟缓得几乎显 得愚蠢。

当然，现在这种思想显得挺可笑的。

放松的地方，就是我的归属所在。

21

Week 5, Semester 2, 2017

Design: Katie Ward

Activism vs Slacktivism Novelist, political activist, Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel wrote that ‘the opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference’. It is a dangerous position of privilege to sit idly by in the face of injustice and to view ourselves as ‘above’ the causes. Most of the pivotal changes in history have come about as a result of activism – the driving force of change will always be the committed individuals who do not simply accept injustice and oppression.

Within our student community, many dedicated groups give hundreds and thousands of collective hours of unpaid labour, committed to issues that affect the student body. But as young people, it is so easy to feel disillusioned with a

complicated and bureaucratic system of democratic change – so activism directly signals to those in power what changes we are looking for in the institutions that affect us. In this way, activism rejects the banality of conventional political processes.

The best activism, in the words of the great Kanye West; ‘gets the people going!’ The work of student groups and departments on campus can be engaging, innovative, and creates genuinely meaningful change. That being said, for activists themselves, how do you avoid that sense of a tireless, Sisyphean struggle against immovable institutions?

How do activists prevent burnout? How

do they know that all work is effective – especially in a modern world where we can display commitment to a cause with a single click and not much more?

With this pull out I hope to open a discussion around how we affect change at the ANU, to inspire people to get involved and critically self-analyse what changes we want to see, and how we will get there.

Charlotte Goodman

Issue 9, Vol. 67

22

‘Amateurs Talk Strategy, Professionals Talk Logistics’ In Conversation with Dr John Minns

Text: Lorane Gaborit To most ANU students, Dr John Minns is better known for his work in the Centre for Latin American Studies and the College of Arts and Social Sciences than for his involvement in refugee politics.

However, an activist for most of his life, John is currently one of the leaders of the Canberra Refugee Action Committee, a component of an Australia-wide organisation that describes itself as working to raise public awareness about the government’s obligations to give refuge to asylum seekers and treat them with dignity and humanity.

In John’s own words, RAC ‘is really a multi-faceted campaign.’ Its primary strength lies in its use of working groups, constituencies within the Canberra community based around similarities and interests, such as Unionists for Refugees or even the Australian National University RAC. For John, organising in this way ‘means you can do some things in the campaign, but you don’t have to do them all.’ Additionally, ‘people are more easily able to relate to and talk to their own constituency.’ John uses the example of the Faith-based working group, which uses parables and Christianity to start conversations about refugees, which John, an atheist, wouldn’t otherwise use.

While we talk about the RAC and the different campaigns John has involved himself in, I’m struck by his focus on the activists themselves. In our conversation, John only briefly mentions the demonstrations he has been a part of, and other aspects of the RAC campaign, but discusses at length the importance of getting more and more people involved.

‘By creating more activists you get a bigger campaign, with more momentum, and then you can put more pressure on the government or at least on one side.

You can’t have a strategy to change the government’s mind without the troops.

People talk about strategy all the time, but they have nothing to implement the strategy with.’

‘What we are doing in the campaign is trying to get activists who can win over the next lot of people. Activists who are successful are activists that are firm and active on the issue, and live next door to people that can be won over, or are members of their family, or part of their churches, or even their classmates.’

This talk of building campaigns by building numbers is particularly interesting in the university context. It’s no

secret that university students have historically had a reputation for being politically active. John himself began his career as an activist as a student in the 1970s Queensland Bjelke-Petersen era, when street marches were banned and John, along with 2000 others, were arrested for protest marching against the ban. But this momentum seems to drop off with graduation, and many organisations struggle to retain activists in the long term. According to John, this is explained by the fact that ‘any social movement, any campaign, has a social turnover. It’s not like having a job.’

Again, he comes back to the importance of recruitment in activism. ‘You need people coming in the front door because it is inevitable given the nature of life that people will be moving out the back door. You can’t expect people to maintain the same level of activism throughout their whole life, in a way you have to accept that there is no magic that is going to keep people in activism forever.’

But John follows this up by emphasising the ‘little bit of magic you can use; you can keep activism not only relevant and useful but also interesting.’ He uses a metaphor of oxygen masks on planes to explain his point, ‘you need to look after the wellbeing of activists before you can recruit anybody else. If people are going to the same things over and over again it’s not that they get physically tired of doing it, but they sense a certain futility with it.’

‘When you conduct a campaign, what you’re selling is not just the policy that you’re pushing. It’s not just what’s on the leaflet that you’re trying to get them to buy. What you’re selling is the fact that you’re handing out the leaflet, because that’s what you’re trying to get them to do as well. So it has to be an interesting product.’

I ask John what he thinks is the biggest obstacle to activism in general. Part of me expects him to talk about time constraints or a lack of interest. But he doesn’t miss a beat.

‘I think the biggest obstacle is disillusionment with the political system to the extent that people think that they can’t change it. That you can’t really effect any change because nothing you do will make any difference. But that’s a broader and justified disillusionment with what you might call democracy.’

I’m surprised John calls this disillusionment ‘justified’, seeing as he has himself dedicated so much time and energy to campaigning. But he agrees with this disillusionment because ‘otherwise we wouldn’t be sitting in a world which is

still pumping out so much CO2. We wouldn’t be sitting in an Australia which didn’t have equal marriage. We wouldn’t be sitting in an Australia which didn’t allow euthanasia. All these things are widely popular.’

But, perhaps surprisingly, this doesn’t mean that John is pessimistic about affecting change. For him, ‘the answer is that what people are seeing as politics is the formal system. Seismic shifts in society do not usually begin there. They might be completed there, but they usually start with people who are talking about what they can do to get an activist campaign going. If you go back to the end of slavery, or votes for women, or labour rights, or gay law reform, or anything like that, I can guarantee you that not a single one of them began in a chamber of parliament. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t eventually happen.’

‘Instead of looking at what hasn’t changed, look at what has, and how.’

On that note, I ask John what advice he would give to young people looking to get involved in activism. With a laugh, he immediately talks about getting involved with RAC, and you can see how passionate he is about his work. More seriously, he adds that from his experience, what is most important is to get a structure. Referencing his international relations roots, he quotes, ‘the amateurs talk about strategy, the professionals talk logistics.’ For John, ‘doing politics like this isn’t about moving pieces around on a chessboard and thinking about clever ways you can talk to a parliamentarian to get them to change their minds. It’s about having thousands of people out on the street. And some money to do things with. Prozaac things like having people to do things with, who have skills and who have time.’

You can find out more about RAC on their website, refugeeaction.org, or join their Facebook groups, www.facebook. com/CanberraRAC/ and www.facebook. com/ANURefugeeActionCommittee/.

Some answers are edited for clarity.

23

Week 5, Semester 2, 2017

The Postal Survey

An Un-ideal Path to Marriage Equality position where their mental health will be at risk.

Text: Lachlan Deimel

When I was 16 years of age, I wrote a letter to my local federal MP, a coalition minister. It was a rather emotional appeal to the conservative for changes to the government’s position on marriage equality. At the time, I was closeted and extremely anxious that this letter could somehow expose my sexuality to my family and friends when I wasn’t ready for it. But I sent the letter anyway, sharing with this influential figure a testimony about my situation and precisely what the practical and symbolic importance of marriage equality was (and still is) to me. A few weeks later I received a reply in the post. Rather than responding to my heartfelt story with support, they did so with rudeness. The person whose job it is to listen and represent instead chose to disregard the story of a closeted 16-year-old – crushing my spirit in the process.

This was undoubtedly a product of intolerance, party politics and homophobia – the stains of which remain in the fabric of the Coalition. Indeed, the postal survey represents the hostility and little regard the government holds towards the LGBTQIA* community; it not only provides a platform to be bigoted, but it places an already vulnerable group in a

The manner in which marriage equality is being dealt with is disappointing, to put it mildly. Nothing breaks my heart more than to think of the thousands of kids around the country who are watching this debate unfold, the occurrence of which reinforces the idea that queer* people are somehow different. As someone who has been out and active within this community for a while, I will often get messages from people, some of which I’ve never met, reaching out for support as they struggle to come to terms with their sexuality. The challenges that these people face is enormous, and I do fear that these discussions will affect the selfworth of these young LGBTQIA* people.

Given what is unfolding, I think it’s essential to stress what an awkward position this postal plebiscite puts the queer* community in. I was recently speaking to a close friend of mine on the subject when he remarked, ‘You know, at least we finally have a viable avenue to pursue marriage equality – at least, in all likelihood, we’re going to make it happen.’

This is so easy to sympathise with. As one of those tens of thousands of people all over the country who have pushed for marriage equality so hard for too long, at times, it feels hopeless and exhausting.

This postal plebiscite is very promising in its likely outcome. Yet, here I make an

important distinction: I’m not just some activist pushing an interest for marriage equality. Rather, I am a member of the queer* community and I, instead, care more about the state, morale and well-being of the people within it. Therefore, I can’t be grateful for this postal survey because it’s unarguably destructive for the lives LGBTQIA* Australians.

There can come a point when the avenue to achieve the desired change that you have been fighting for comes at an unfavourable and/or unnecessary cost. In these instances, conviction of principle and care of those you’re fighting for must always take precedence. This is why I am fundamentally opposed to this plebiscite. Unfortunately, our hands could be forced. With some legal advice indicating the legitimacy of the postal survey, it could very well go ahead. In which case, I intend to give the campaign everything I’ve got. While boycotting might seem like a reasonable corollary to my disapproval to the survey, I say this: acknowledge that the postal survey is far from ideal, prioritise looking out for and building up the people around you while working hard to win so that at least there is some return from this nightmare of a plebiscite. So, while we continue to rally against the survey while we can, know that the yes campaign is armed and ready and should the survey be permitted, by hell, we will win it.

An Ineffective Activist Text: Anonymous Will the revolution be Tweeted?

Yes, but not by you, or any of your prideflag DP-ing, Change.org-ing, Je Suis Charlie-ing lefty mates.

That’s not to say that your low-effort online activism (‘slacktivism’) is a particularly bad thing. It’s not; it’s just not a particularly good thing either. The real activists, the people Getting Things Done, are the ones who take action, rather than selfies.

If your bravest political moments in the year to date all involve click-based support for views shared by at least 70 per cent of the Australian population, you are the real-world equivalent of Oz’s Munchkins, emerging to celebrate the death of the Wicked Witch after Dorothy’s house has crushed her for you. Had you been living in London in 1936, when 20,000 of London’s socialists, Irish dockers, Jewish people, communists and anarchists fought Oswald

Mosley’s Blackshirts all the way down Cable Street, killing off his movement for good, you would have stayed home and read the paper.

And that’s fine, and perhaps even something to be celebrated! History needs ballast as well as thrust, and that’s what you provide. If everyone had passionately held self-formed views, rather than merely copying the ideas of those around them, all societies would be wracked by civil war and human civilisation would be impossible. (The unpleasant corollary of this, of course, is that since you are, in 2017, a low-effort supporter of marriage equality, you would probably be, in 1917, a casual racist.)

You are the sheep of political discourse – but that’s okay. After all, a shepherd’s not actually a shepherd if no sheep are following them. Through your passivity, you give weight to the movements initiated by those who actually hold opinions, (at least, once those movements are popular enough to be uncontroversial within your peer group) and they, symbiotically, allow you to pretend to be an

actual, politically engaged human being. You are flotsam on the tide of history, but without you, who would know which way the tide is flowing? And by the same token, when Jaime Lannister warns Euron Greyjoy about the capricious mob that happily cheers on whoever sits the throne and spits on whoever is brought to them in chains, he was also describing you.

But don’t be sad that your relatively privileged upbringing has left you so politically enervated that the height of your activism involves the movement of one solitary finger (or thumb, if you prefer mobile) – you are the sturdy, unengaged bricks from which our society gradually builds consensus. And, if that’s not enough, you can comfort yourself with the thought that if anything (God forbid!) does ever come close to threatening your privilege personally, the streets will be thronging with you and those like you, as you march forth to defend it.

Issue 9, Vol. 67

24

The ANU Women’s Department Then and Now

Content Warning: mentions of sexual assault and the AHRC survey Text: Laura Perkov Departments and autonomous collectives have played a vital role in activism at the ANU for decades. When the Women’s Department was first made an official part of ANUSA in 1993, Emma Partridge was the Women’s Officer – a role largely underfunded, misunderstood, and taken for granted. Although the Department has gone through a substantial amount of change since then, a few things remain the same.

The formation of supportive communities Women’s spaces are an important way to meet other women on campus – to learn from each other, seek advice, and be in a safe and comfortable space. The Women’s Department was initially separate to a group called Women On Campus, who ran social events and took care of the Rapunzel Room, the women’s autonomous space. A series of notebooks were used to communicate with others who used the room. Entries in these books give insight into a close-knit community of students – from mundane statements (‘just popped in for a quiet spot on a busy day’) to the more serious, like advice about pregnancy. Other entries show just how much the Department has changed: a call-out for Women’s Officer described the role as not ‘too onerous’, and another entry detailed how many thought that it was a ‘nest of lesbians’.

Women’s spaces and activism on campus in previous decades have been in-person spaces. Today, this work largely takes place in online communities – which is more readily accessible to a greater amount people and is more immediate.

The Women’s Department online spaces are a popular way of finding solidarity, learning, promoting interesting things that women and non-binary people are

doing on and around campus, getting recommendations, advice, and as a forum for advocacy at the ANU.

Men complaining Another constant is the backlash from men on campus – one entry in a notebook from 1993 describes how a man, upset that women had an autonomous space on campus, broke into the Rapunzel Room. An entry by Lise states: ‘they don’t actually want [a room], they just got cut that we made the Women’s Room happen. Besides the rest of the world is men’s space (or at least male dominated).

I would suggest the bar, any café, lecture theatre, and so on and ad nauseam if they are looking for a men’s room’. Calls for a Men’s Department continue today.

Issues of safety on campus, sexual harassment and assault, and intersecting oppressions Most of the problems that women and non-binary students faced in the past are still impacting us today. An article from 2002 titled ‘Security on campus: still not high on the university agenda’

by Nicola Jackson details the failings of the ANU Security in protecting vulnerable students. Today, areas of campus and surrounding suburbs are still poorly lit, security measures like the UniSafe Bus remain ineffective, and the University continues to treat students who speak up like a nuisance or a legal liability. Sexual assault and violence in our community

is still endemic, as the recent release of the AHRC Survey demonstrates.

The marginalisation of the most vulnerable continues – 2002 articles ‘Racists hiding behind feminism’ by Allison Dellit and ‘Trans women in NOWSA: The case for inclusion’ by Julie Peters indicate that the Women’s Department has never been immune to the white and cis-centric feminism that is prominent in mainstream women’s spaces. We have made progress – the creation of the Women of Colour Collective has been imperative in the success of the current Department, and we are currently working on the inclusion and celebration of trans, intersex and gender-diverse people in the Department. But we still have a long way to go.

As long as there are groups who face oppression, there will be a need for a space in which a voice can be nurtured and heard. The ANU Women’s Department continues to provide this voice for those who are marginalised – for those who are spoken over, for those who feel like they can’t speak out at all. We will continue to advocate for the interests of women and non-binary people on campus and provide a safe and supportive community for them at the ANU. Laura Perkov is the 2018 ANUSA Women’s Officer.

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Week 5, Semester 2, 2017

Tips for a Good Handover

Text: Holly Zhang The biggest barrier to a decent handover is a 100 per cent tragic, and (often inevitable) burnout.

It is hard to aim for sustainability when student advocate positions within which we operate are so inherently unsustainable. So, step zero: try not to burnout, so that you have the energy to do a handover.

considerations (which are arguably the most important part of the whole stupol thing).

As you settle into a new role, it’s really hard to remember what used to be confusing or hard to navigate. Revisit journals or friends who you’ve talked to earlier in the year if that helps to jog your memory about things that you forgot to document as you went along.

3. Decide what should be doc1. Individualise – the

umented (and document it!)

person comes first.

and what you need to pass on

There has to be a handover relationship where you trust and share with each other useful info in a way that works for you both. Have a conversation about how to navigate the whole process of handover. Do informal coffee chats if that works for you, or a more structured timeline over weeks if written plans make more sense.

The person receiving the handover should take more of an active role here even though they are there to soak up all the outgoing human’s wisdoms.

But, actually, the outgoing person probably would really appreciate some pointers on how to get certain things through, or what the most pressing worries/confusions/lack of information are. There’s also a power imbalance here where the new person is very reliant on the outgoing person for everything – so definitely address that and make space for the new person to shape the whole process.

2. Start immediately.

Tell the person you’re handing over to start compiling their handover straight away – even better – tell them to remember what factors went into their decision to commit to the position so that they can assist others in navigating the pre-commitment-to-role

in conversational/other forms (you can be creative here).

You will need to formalise some records: these are things like account information/log ins, constitutions/other governance documents, financial records, forms and processes. Don’t worry if there are gaps – just be clear about where they exist so the next person can fill them in.

Other things are more sensitive like the dynamics of working relationships, hacks, tricks and tactics that you’d rather not formalise/record in writing, and generally more personal things like navigating personal relationships, self-care and your own expectations/ feelings about the role. These are maybe better delivered in person, or in other more creative forms. I’ll never forget the little care package that I received with a small candle, a journal and a pair of happy socks – they have gotten me through lots of hard times.

4. Set good boundaries.

Boundaries are key to any good relationship – you don’t want the new person to defer to you or be constantly coming back to you, but also you want them to feel comfortable to reach out

for when they genuinely need assistance and advice. Make sure you are clear about what aspects you are completely giving over – and when, and what doors are still open for chats, support and advice.

5. Keep most things – especially if you didn’t engage with it The work existed before you realised it was going on, and the work will continue after you retire from stupol – the work is most important, so try to keep good records of what you found useful (and why) and pass on the things that you didn’t find super helpful. You want to use your discretion in narrowing down things for the person you are handing over to, but also remember that people can have different priorities and ways of approaching the role, and that your organisation can experience a lot of change that might make some information more useful some years than others. Pass on the backlogged ideas that you didn’t get to see through in your term, try to prune and neaten some of the historical records of the organisation and try to add things so that you are leaving the organisation with more than when you arrived.

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What Can We Learn from Corbyn and Sanders?

Text: Dom Cradick There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the left is experiencing victories around the world which it has not experienced in decades. Whether these are the electoral gains or mass ideological shifts that change the nature of national discussions, the left is definitively back. There is now a mainstream debate about the impacts of neoliberal policies – something that until a few years ago was unimaginable. Despite all this global success, it presents an extreme identity crisis to the Australian left as they struggle to find a coherent direction that replicates the triumphs abroad.

Arguably, the two most similar countries to Australia (in terms of political systems) which have experienced this surge are the United Kingdom and the United States. While left-wing surges across Europe and other countries are being led by new political parties that have no experience in government entering the sphere (Podemos in Spain, SYRIZA in Greece etc.), the opposite is true for the UK and the US. We can attribute the left’s energy in the US to the then potential Democratic Party nominee Bernie Sanders. An explicit and avowed socialist for his entire political life as an independent senator, he recognised that the only chance for mass mobilisation of the left came in the form of an existing dominant political institution – the Democratic Party. Only the Democratic party has the structure, recognition and resources to achieve momentum. The governing committee of the party did everything they could to prevent Bernie from winning the primaries that would have allowed him to be the actual Democratic nominee and they ultimately succeeded – at the expense of losing the election that matters most.

Bernie Sanders has now asserted himself post-election as the voice of the American left in the Democratic Party, controlling the direction of this large and motivated group. It would not be unwise to predict that this group will be responsible for electoral victories in the future.

An almost parallel situation exists in the UK. Jeremy Corbyn, also a prominent left-winger, won his leadership bid due to similar mass mobilisation and engagement of the general public. A lifelong member of the Labour Party, he too acknowledges that genuine left-wing change comes in the form of an institution that has lasting governmental

experience. Before the 9 June 9 election, his leadership was plagued by constant undermining from his parliamentary colleagues and horrendous treatment from the media, even from supposedly left leaning papers such as The Guardian. The result of the election speaks for itself, Jeremy Corbyn has severely weakened the Tories ideologically, which has a lacked a coherent direction since then.

Riding on a wave of popular approval, Corbyn has presented himself, ironically, as a strong and stable alternative to the Tory regime.

In Australia, both Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn are being celebrated by the left here. Greens members and those from the array of small socialist groups have all been energised by their successes but have failed to admit how they might replicate their ideological success here. They deny that the Australian Labor Party is the vehicle to achieve a leftist transformation of society. We can easily condense the range of excuses into one thought: ‘There is no one in the ALP that is like Corbyn or Bernie.’ This is an interesting thought to entertain. The proposition centres around the personality of these leaders rather than the policies they represent. Corbyn and Sanders are still subject to party member democracy that dictates the policies taken to elections (the same in the ALP). A good example of this is Corbyn’s renewal of the UK’s nuclear weapon program – something he is adamantly against but must concede as per party demand. Party members influence policy, while leaders represent the embodiment of this policy.

The refutation of the ALP by personality factors is hypocritical from those who supposedly believe in collective action and substantive policy over personality.

It is important to note an important structural difference to that of the ALP and its international equivalent institutions: party discipline. Bernie Sanders was at liberty to express his positions before he ran for the Democratic nomination as he was an independent but also after he became a Democrat, as the party tolerates dissident voting. This is something that was important in fostering Jeremy Corbyn’s reputation – his principled approach came into conflict with his own party’s stance on more than 500 occasions. The ALP does not tolerate this level of dissidence – MPs and MLAs face expulsion when voting against the party’s position. While one might argue that this shows a commitment to solidarity, it certainly makes it harder to observe ALP

MPs individual stances on issues. This should not be confused as the ALP not having anyone comparable to Corbyn or Sanders.

Moreover, the proposition is an answer to the wrong question; it is not ‘Does the ALP have anyone like Corbyn or Sanders?’ but more ‘Which political institution is most likely to replicate their success?’

Greens members and other political groups may still deny the answer to that as the ALP and insist it is themselves.

But this denial is not a failure of recognising how the Australian left might replicate Corbyn and Sanders’ successes in our context – it is an implicit defensive response as it poses an existential threat to the non-ALP left.

The Greens have experienced no electoral success in the USA, but have in the UK, so there is comparability. The Greens in the UK have become irrelevant since Corbyn – their vote from 2015 to 2017 dropped by more than half, and party membership from 2015 to 2016 (latest numbers available) fell by 27 per cent. Indeed, the Australian Greens have been polling pretty poorly since the last election, and an open war between the centrist tree tory faction represented by Richard Di Natale and the genuine left,

by Lee Rhiannon has broken out. It has exposed severe issues with their party ‘democracy’, predominately how they easily manipulate consensus voting. Admittedly, the suggestion that the Greens moving to the right will result in electoral gains (particularly while the ALP is moving to the left) is bizarre. The real take away, however, is that the Greens’ internal processes are not robust and cannot handle the mass mobilisation of the left that is needed.

If the Australian left is serious about achieving radical change, it needs to show unity and get around the only institution which can do so. Participating in the Australian Labor Party’s democracy by way of membership is far more useful to the cause than moralising from the outset.

Dom is the Vice President of the ANU Young Labor Left

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Week 5, Semester 2, 2017

Student Activism in Myanmar

Text: Mani Bovell In the recent Winter break I was lucky enough to be apart of the Political Economy of Myanmar Study tour. After many hours spent picking the brains of students in Myanmar and long sweaty days spent digging through Yangon’s bookshops, the nation’s long history of student activism sparked my interest.

This article aims to introduce some of this history, as homage to student activists that paved the way for change in the nation.

After a long history of brutal authoritarian regimes, ethnic conflict and chronic underdevelopment, Myanmar has recently become the world’s latest poster child for democratic transitions. Democratic reforms begun in the nation in 2008 with constitutional recognition and were solidified in 2015, with the election of Aung San Suu Kyi’s (or Daw Su as she is formally referred to in Myanmar) National League for Democracy Government. The process has not been a smooth one; the military still constitutionally controls 25% of the parliament and four key ministries, making practical legislative change for Daw Suu’s fresh government incredibly difficult. Furthermore, military-backed business conglomerates control swathes of Myanmar’s fledgling economy and ethnic conflict rages on.

Although the situation in the nation is evidently a complex one, transitions towards a stable future have begun nonetheless. These transitions have not come easily; they have been hard fought for.

The personification of this fight has been Daw Suu, a tireless global campaigner and domestic leader for change in her nation. However, Daw Suu has not been the only force for change within Myanmar, a vital role has also been played by student activists.

Throughout Myanmar’s volatile postcolonial history, students have been at the forefront of democratic movements, attempts to topple the state or demands for drastic social, economic and political change. They have played a pivotal role in the nation’s initial transitions towards a democratic system and continue to be a powerful force of political dissent today.

Students played a vital role during Myanmar’s brutal authoritarian regime from 1962 to 2011. Following a coup in 1962, Myanmar began a period of stateled brutality. The direction of this brutality towards students began in July of

the same year, when students at Yangon University staged a protest over changes to their dormitory regulations. The regime responded by promptly destroying the historic university student union building (Hlaing 2007, pp.226). After oppression of both students and wider society as a whole continued to rage, participation in organised student movements drastically fell. Political apathy became a safe norm. However brutality could not stop student activists all together, they were instead forced underground into a network of clandestine political reading clubs. Reportedly up to 50 reading groups operated in university campuses in Mandalay and Yangon during the 70’s and 80’s (Hlaing 2007, pp.226). These reading groups would later play a vital role in mobilising students for perhaps the defining moment in the history of student activism in Myanmar, the 1988 uprisings (Hlaing 2007, pp.226).

The student led revolutions of 1988 brought about the fall of Ne Win’s socialist government and saw Daw Su rise as a national hero. These uprisings came when the nation was at a boiling point.

Two decades of economic mismanagement, poor social policy and brutal authoritarian rule meant the stage was set for a revolt. These revolts were both started and continuously led by students (Lintner 1990). Student uprisings began in March, sparked by small brawl between students from the Rangoon Institute of Technology and another group of young people. This incident at a tea house exposed serious police malpractice and corruption and students hurled themselves into reactionary revolt. Student protests soon gained momentum and eventually began calling for an end to authoritarian governance. As students took to the streets and called for change, they bravely faced reaction from the regime. This reaction was devastating. Reports of brutality against students during the uprisings include the infamous red-bridge massacre, where reportedly over one hundred students were killed on the banks of Yangon’s picturesque Inya lake, students being left in police vans to suffocate and the use gang rape of students as a suppression tool.

Stories of the brutality faced by students was a rallying cry to many more people to join the fight against the dictatorship (Lintner 1990, 70-86). From humble beginnings, the 1988 uprisings eventually led to full-scale pro democracy protests, with involvement from reportedly over 1 million people in Yangon alone (Lintner 1990, pp.7). The protests placed enough

pressure on the regime to force the resignation of Ne Win on September of 1988. Sadly, after the uprisings, the nation returned to another form of brutal authoritarian rule. However, under the leadership of organised student movements the 1988 uprisings were a vital step towards the Myanmar’s eventual democratic transition.

Political transitions in Myanmar have many difficulties to overcome, however the nation has come a long way since its authoritarian regimes. This position would not have been reaching without student activists, who were at the forefront of Myanmar’s most important cries for democracy, in many cases giving their lives for the cause. As the nation continues its path towards reconciliation and stability, this history must not be forgotten.

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Collage: James Atkinson

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Week 5, Semester 2, 2017

COMMENT // Features

Taking on the Perspective of Others natural precursor to empathy. Only once we understand that others have their own experiences can we possibly share in their joys and burdens.

Text: Jess Barallon Probably one of the greatest (yet most underrated) realisations that any of us will ever have is the simple, infantile understanding that others lead their own lives, boast their own stories, and experience their own feelings. These are completely separate to our own.

This commonplace epiphany is called the ‘theory of mind’ and, to be perfectly honest, it’s a very ordinary cognitive development that humans go through as toddlers, and most probably don’t give it a second thought. However, it still seems wonderfully implausible that every single person we encounter has an entire life filled with experiences and emotions we know nothing about. This logic applies to nearly everyone – from the strangers we pass by in the supermarket, to our lecturers and tutors, even to our best friends.

The fact that we inherently know so little about each other’s lives means that communication is essential in any social interaction, no matter whom with. This need for communication, and for taking the perspective of others, is what makes the theory of mind so essential. It is the

To be empathetic is to not only comprehend others’ emotions but to feel them too. Like most people, I do my very best to be empathetic. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that I’m a very emotionally sensitive person; I’ve cried in nearly every movie I’ve ever seen and one of my favourite past-times is overthinking. I think that maybe, for this reason, I’m careful to notice emotional signals in other people. These signals are like an unspoken secret language, comprised of behavioural changes and shifts in tone.

On the one hand, being attuned to this vernacular can be an incredibly uplifting thing. It’s empathy that makes people’s good moods so contagious, and empathy that leads us to build joyful friendships, based on mutual understanding.

Yet when I moved into a shared accommodation with hundreds of other students my age this year, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the cacophony of emotions that surrounded me constantly.

One of my friends once said that at college, it’s impossible to walk for longer than a minute without bumping into someone you know, and I can definitely

attest to that. The intimacy of college means that even a short trip to the bathroom is an opportunity to socialise. I’ve seen casual conversations carried out near the bathrooms by towel-sporting neighbours and lengthy discussions in the dining hall while tea cools on a quick ‘study break’ that should’ve ended ten minutes prior.

This social aspect is surprisingly one of my favourite things about where I live.

I find the spontaneous, good-natured exchanges that accompany most tasks thoroughly elevating and for this reason, I’ve loved nearly every minute. However, constantly being surrounded by people can come at a cost. I remember during my first month at college, I was walking down my floor’s corridor and heard uncontrollable sobbing on the other side of a door. The name on the door wasn’t one I recognised, but regardless, the sound was, in the true sense of the word, shocking. That moment, albeit small, was a huge wake-up call to the fact that although I was having a wonderful time, others might not be. There have been other moments – times when I’ve realised that the people around me are fighting their own battles. Sometimes, that can be a lot to take on; our moods are incredibly malleable and it’s very easy to absorb somebody else’s stress or sadness

and carry it as your own without even realising it.

This is why balance is essential. I believe that empathy is one of the most important parts of what makes us human. Simultaneously, however, in environments where emotions are running high, it’s often essential to pull the focus back onto yourself. Safety demonstrations on airplanes demand that ‘in the unlikely event of an emergency, attend to yourself first, before helping those around you.’ I think this applies to emotional hardships as well. Looking after others is crucial, especially in residential halls and shared accommodations, where the majority of your neighbours are living away from home and building new support networks from scratch. Although we sometimes forget to acknowledge that we’re in more or less the same position and being too open to others’ emotions can be damaging. Empathy, while innate, can be exhausting. This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t care for the wellbeing of the people around us; on the contrary, I think that looking out for others should be prioritised, especially in communal living situations. Rather, we should monitor our own emotions, too. In the words of J. M. Barrie, ‘always be a little kinder than is necessary’ – especially to yourself.

Woroni Cryptic 6 S P E 7 C T 10 A C 12 L E 1

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1 Rancid friend reaches an impasse (9)

1 Dot and pin the French! A sight to see! (9)

6 Individual in labyrinth finds corn (5)

2 A good tube breaks - going to see a man…

(5,1,3)

7 100 spirit animals? Breakfast cakes! (8) 9 Small rent in county (5) 10 Aid Mecca! blurts professor (8) 11 American era of consumption! (5) 12 Steals? but stool returns (5) 14 A Nationalist and Rafter revolts (7) 18 Tin monkeys served on a platter (7) 19 Broken Pairs in European city (5) 20 Tour a lit, strange class of twenty students (8)

3 Ponder and hesitate in gallery (6) 4 Beckett serenaded the tech company (7) 5 Family treasures found in Homer's oil (9) 8 Burning ulcer as non-religious (7) 13 Dessert within secret service begins (6) 15 Aw Robin! Lose the colourful arch (7) 16 Not in the mail? Garrison on the frontier (7) 17 Remove weed from warehouse (5) 18 Unit in dungeon (4)

se u o t e ( pen m i t It’s ac tual aper an c tual p on a again). ble

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Week 5, Semester 2, 2017

Colourful Places and In-Between Spaces is an

exploration of how light and colour interact in outdoor spaces and highlights the juxtaposition between harsh smoke and natural light.

Julia Faragher

Issue 9, Vol. 67

CULTURE // ART

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Holding Out for a Hero Text: Miriam Sadler The villain of my childhood was probably Voldemort. Possibly also Randall from Monsters Inc. They were archetypal villains.

Sure, Voldemort had the whole miserable childhood thing going on, and we learn in Monsters University that Randall was a bit shy but, for the most part, the backstory was irrelevant. They were villains intent on curbing the adventures of infallible, lovable protagonists like Harry or Mike Wazowski. Bad was bad and good was good.

Even as I got older, Hollywood’s bad guys were generally easy to spot. Think: the classic Bond villain with a sinister eye patch or a muted Russian accent, always defeated in their nefarious doings by the time the lights came on. They are usually old, ugly and often unnecessarily flamboyant.

Villainy has typically been the realm of damaging ethnic stereotypes and caricatures. Certainly, Hollywood is striving to create more complex villains; Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs is an example of how well-crafted villainy can be. More recently, the Armitage family in Jordan Peele’s directional masterpiece Get Out delivered a valuable lesson in psychological creepiness.

Yet, many of the two-dimensional stereotypes of villains remain. Bad remains bad and good remains good.

so). Commentary on good and evil is never as sharply defined in TV and villainy has always been traditionally underrepresented.

Like Hollywood, TV is experiencing its own revival and refining of the classic villain. Not only are villains given more screen time in general but they also crafted to incorporate backstories, emotional depth, complex narratives and subtleties of character that are very removed from the moustache twirling, posturing villains of an earlier era.

Welcome to the renaissance of the TV villain.

I’m going to start with the really bad guys. I’m thinking Ramsay Bolton in Game of Thrones here.

Ramsay engaged in plenty of horrific crimes but was an important feature of the ensemble cast. In a similar vein, House of Cards’ Frank Underwood is the pure antithesis of a protagonist; a man so intent on his political goals that he is willing to take down anyone caught in his path without even a

‘Welcome to the renaissance of the TV villain.’

But what about TV? Villainy in TV has never been quite so clear-cut as in film; the sitcom or series style doesn’t lend itself as comfortably having a stock bad guy and certainly not one with any emotional depth or believable motivation.

Antagonism in TV traditionally comes from the mundane aspects of life and family or, in the case of crime, faceless organisations or governments. There was no seething criminal overlord presiding over the misfortunes of the characters in Friends (unless you count Ross which, after a recent rewatch, I am inclined to do

hitch in his South Carolina drawl.

He has been crafted so magnificently, both in the subtleties of Kevin Spacey’s performance, but also the narrative handed to him.

Both of these characters are so blisteringly evil and devoid of any empathetic possibilities yet have been expertly crafted and executed; they are handsome and beguiling, with no need to rely on comedy tropes or physical affectations.

Sure, the Ramsay Boltons of the world are near-compulsive viewing but what has really captured the public’s attention are characters like Tony Soprano and Walter

White – the lovable anti-hero.

They’re engaging in some pretty serious criminal behaviour, but there’s something redeeming in them, something very human that makes them so watchable. Their motivations and actions are fairly horrific, but their starting point is not far from our own realities.

Misfits perhaps best epitomises our current love of the antihero: young offenders completing community service while dealing with the troubles associated with superpowers. They’re in equal measures vulgar and lovable, badly behaved and saving the world.

Ensemble shows such as How to Get Away with Murder and The Wire have astutely blurred the dichotomy between good and bad with their characters alone: Omar Little with his chilling whistle and strong moral compass, Annalise Keating and her dazzling ruthlessness. Women, especially, while still criminally underrepresented in TV, are given more opportunities in villain and anti-hero roles.

This article wouldn’t be complete with a mention of the ladies of Orange is the New Black and of course, Claire Underwood of House of Cards, who is equally as manipulative and exceptional as her husband.

Perhaps the problem here is that we’re short on heroes. There’s something about the classic TV protagonist that is just a little too perfect, and too bland for me. I never found I could relate to Monica and Rachel, and How I Met Your Mother lost its way for me because they were all just so nice to each other. Villainy is much more fun to watch. The nuances of baddies and how they so carefully represent but also enmesh good and evil gives them a certifiably edge over heroes in my mind. Current TV is handing us a platter of baddies, a plethora of smart, twisted characters or lovable petty criminals, Moriartys and Cersei Lannisters. Can bad still really be bad when it’s this good?

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Week 5, Semester 2, 2017

CULTURE // ART

Are Video Games High Art? Text: Nick Blood For those of us into games, the question of whether we can consider them as ‘high art’ can be a fascinating one.

We already know that games can be artful, but so can advertising and we don’t hang that in the Louvre or the National Gallery. The question of whether games can be a ‘proper’ or ‘high’ art form is what we’re considering here, and it’s not clear-cut.

When we think of games as high art, we might focus on the visuals which have progressed dramatically in the last decade. However, we could also apply similar questions to a game’s narrative and storyline, or its music, or the quality of its acting.

Most visual artists, writers, musicians and actors who get involved in video games aren’t really operating in the ‘high art’ scene, and that might be telling. Video game artists rarely come from the ‘gallery’ background, famous game writers come from pulp fiction backgrounds if any, and game composers and voice actors come from Hollywood and not the Royal Philharmonic or Broadway. This might suggest that games still struggle for legitimacy as a true art form.

We see this idea reflected at times in the mainstream media. Theatre goes in the ‘Art’ or ‘Culture’ section, and games go into ‘Entertainment’. This division again might be telling: categorising games in this way suggests that their function is primarily to entertain, not make artistically or culturally important expressions.

Despite this, one might ask if any of this is relevant. Just because games aren’t treated seriously by some sectors of society doesn’t suggest they aren’t capable of being serious artistic or cultural expressions. Maybe some games can even be considered high art for what they achieve functionally in design, or what they somehow

manage to say about us. The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York exemplifies this broader perspective through its own permanent exhibit of 14 video games.

For years, I worked on the game EVE Online, now part of that permanent exhibit. I don’t know if it’s high art, but there’s the game I once worked on, sitting alongside icons like Pacman. It’s not there for its visuals, music, narrative, or any single characteristic. It’s there for the combined effect they all have in creating a framework for what is a unique occurrence in the gaming world: a single-server environment hosting thousands of players in the same place at the same time. The result is complex, emergent behaviour – social, economic, and political interactions that reflect real-life ones.

EVE’s economy is a good example of this. With mentions in Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, it is a thing of fascination and wonder for many, and demonstrates the kind of complexity and richness seen in other areas of the game. Although the ingame economy is a virtual one, it shares many of the characteristics of its real-world counterparts: price wars, cartels, scams – all happening between thousands of players.

The economy has become sufficiently complex – and important to the health of the game – that the game creators (CCP) have hired a full-time, in-house economist to oversee it, as well as staff to root out illegal ‘gold farmers’ who sell in-game currency illegally on sites like eBay. If this all sounds like serious business, it is. CCP once advertised the game as ‘more meaningful than real life.’ While outlandish, this move accurately represents their desire for players to view the game as their secondary, virtual life. It equally signals CCP’s dedication to providing the platform for that kind of experience.

On that note, EVE’s creators unapologetically allow in-game monetary scams, item theft, robbery, piracy and other dirty deeds. This ‘handsoff’ governance approach cultivates a sociopolitical structure resembling Wall Street, House of Cards, and the Wild West. Players have earned infamy and immortality as robber barons and political traitors.

At CCP I was an in-house fiction writer and ‘content developer’ – effectively working on storyline and narrative. The way we approached our art sometimes mirrored this philosophy of ‘player-driven’ content. Rather than tell stories from on high as the ‘writers’, we’d operate as ‘bards’ and write about players instead. Before I wrote articles for Woroni, I wrote news articles for EVE Online covering the political happenings among player alliances. What a strange job that was, and what an interesting world we live in where that can even be a job.

I don’t know if all of this means that a game can be high art. What I can say is that EVE finds itself in a museum for a good reason. It’s a complex, brilliant beast, with a deliciously dark underbelly that few game designers would ever contemplate. It offers us something to marvel at for a moment, certainly, but more deeply, it operates as a fascinating simulated pocket universe – an oracle that can offer up profound insights, and a living, unscripted, narrative that provides incredible stories. Perhaps it doesn’t matter what we label it as when it can do all that?

In fact, perhaps the label ‘high art’ isn’t even an accurate descriptor of what makes EVE and other games so artful to begin with. Perhaps gamers shouldn’t worry about what makes high art, and appreciate that they – better than most people – can see and appreciate the beauty in a game.

CULTURE // LIFE & STYLE

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To Braddon and Beyond Text: Casley Rowan It may be difficult for many students, especially those living on campus, to imagine frequenting a café that is not Grounds or Cupping Room. Those who are more ambitious may even make expeditions into the walking or cycling confines of the Inner North. However, for those of us making the off campus move, it makes sense to broaden our hangout and study spot horizons.

Whether you’re searching for an original spot for a first date (and willing to cop an Uber fare) or simply wanting a new place to have brunch on a Sunday morning, I set out on an inter-suburb mission to add some new hotspots to my hit list.

For the daytime

Double Shot – Deakin I wake up wanting to kiss you is the catchphrase of this Instagram-worthy café nestled in the sleepy neighbourhood of Deakin. Whether you are sitting inside surrounded by the hanging plants, drop-down globes and stacked wooden logs or outside cozied up under the provided blankets and yellow umbrellas, you will feel just as one brunching should feel – the time is slower, the sun warmer and the sky bluer. I’d recommend the shakshouka baked eggs, the matcha latte or one of their incredible smoothies – adding ‘smoothie’ onto any flavour combo including malt and peanut butter is bound to reduce the calorie intake by at least half in my opinion.

You can also build your own super salad or drop in for a takeaway cronut or a protein ball. Don’t forget to check out their seasonal specials as well – the winter gingerbread waffle sandwich with caramelised fig ice-cream, butterscotch sauce and candied pecans will take you days to recover from but is guaranteed worth it.

Bring your quirkiest interstate friend.

Farmer’s Daughter – Yarralumla The proximity of the Yarralumla kebab shop is certainly not the only reason to visit this little hideaway: tucked in between a gorgeous gift store and a Thai restaurant, you will find Farmer’s Daughter. You know that joyful shade of yellow that reminds you of summer and reading on the beach? This is the cornerstone of the colour scheme, and is guaranteed to bring you happiness. If that’s not enough, the milkshakes are a must try, as well as the macarons which are extra fluffy. It would be easy for an afternoon to leisurely slip by while you spend time with a book and coffee in hand. Extra points for the funky mural – you’ll have to go to see what I’m talking about – and for the super friendly staff.

Bring your friend that’s always there for you to show them that you care.

Raven and Rose – Kingston I’m all about a bit of alliteration in my café names, which is why Raven and Rose drew me in on one of my rare trips to Kingston. If you’re looking for an excuse to head across the lake that isn’t Brodburger, I would recommend trying

this little corner café. It’s light and open, and has an extensive menu – the perfect place to end an afternoon stroll through the quaint Kingston village. The coffee was strong and a perfect temperature, and the service was brisk.

Bring your housemate to get away from your usual routine.

For the night time

Tilly’s – Lyneham This is one that’s actually suited for both day and night. During the day, it’s a quiet study spot that evokes a moody stroll through the streets of Paris just moments before ducking in for un café. At night, it transforms into a très français bistro complete with a jazz band. With a range of small booths and larger tables, this is a perfect place for an intimate drink or larger gathering. If the piano and double bass isn’t enough to get you going, they offer a huge range of old school cocktails and a decadent chocolate cake which is just as good for the designated driver.

Bring your parents because they secretly love a jazz band.

The Old Canberra Inn – Lyneham Ever craved that Scandinavian cabin in the woods vibe within the comforts of Canberra? Look no further than The Old Canberra Inn, another gem courtesy of Lyneham. It’s a small, sleepy cabin-style inn, and the million dollar seats are of course the leather armchairs by the fire.

This is the kind of place I would imagine Father Christmas having a whiskey with his friends. It is warm and inviting, with a crowd that would be happy to strike up

and deep and meaningful conversation as they warm their bums at the fire. Try to get in earlyish to snag a seat, or if you’re coming with a group of friends the space is small enough for a ‘stand and mingle’ without feeling like you’re loitering.

This is the perfect winter spot, and with a whole collection of craft beers, snacks and sticky date pudding, your night is set to be as cosy as can be – you may even see a reindeer on your way home.

Bring your friends who can co-ordinate festive sweaters.

The Duxton – O’Connor Are you a later-year student craving some night-time fun without sticky shoes and too many regrets in the morning? Enter The Duxton – an exceptionally versatile space that’s perfect for anything from a 21st in the Loft to a casual game of pool with your mates. It literally has it all – a softly lit courtyard, a rooftop terrace, a bistro and a bar. The Loft is especially groovy, with a beautiful view of the leafy suburb of O’Connor and Telstra Tower in the distance. I’d go for an evening meal in summer that leads into a few drinks too many and lots of laughs. There is Duxton Delux Trivia every Wednesday to cure those mid-week blues, and live entertainment every Friday and Saturday night to add an extra kick to your weekend. For the young professionals still craving that weeknight fun, there is ‘Suits and Sips’ in the Loft every Thursday from 5pm – who wouldn’t risk a Friday morning hangover for $10 Vanilla Espresso Martinis?

Bring your new crush here on a date – they are bound to be impressed.

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Week 5, Semester 2, 2017

CULTURE // LIFE & STYLE

Like Long Distance How to Keep Close When You’re Far Apart

Text: Anna Fox Illustrations: Zoe O’Leary Cameron If you believe traditional wisdom, there’s nothing better than a little space in a relationship to make the heart grow fonder.

If you’ve been in a long-distance relationship, however, you’re probably keenly aware of the difference between ‘a little space’ and ‘400+ kilometres only traversable through exhausting bus journeys or ruinously expensive plane tickets’, and the unique frustrations such ‘space’ can cause.

Here are a few tips for understanding and navigating both burgeoning and established romantic relationships turned long distance, to help to make sense of the fairly shitty situation you can find yourself in.

Essential #1: Communication The first and foremost element of establishing how your relationship is going to work is to be vulnerable. Scary, right? The thing is, in long distance relationships, there’s little room to be coy about your feelings. LDRs require a considered investment of time, effort, and eventually money – so both parties ought to be clear about their intentions with regard to the other person in order to proceed. Simply put: if you like them enough to make this crazy journey work, tell them – and if you don’t, let them down gently.

Whether you’ve been together for three months or three years, it’s key to earnestly discuss the practicalities of how you’ll both manage your newly proximity-challenged relationship. A good marker of this is to consider what’s been working for each of you in the relationship so far, and work from there. While considerations will vary between couples, several discussions will commonly crop up: do you like to check in with each other at least once a day, or more or less frequently? Do you have particular activities you really enjoy doing together, and is there

a way to continue this while you’re separated? (Hint: digitally!) What role does sex play in your relationship, and how do you plan to sustain that while separated?

(Hint: probably also digitally!)

If your relationship is relatively new, you’ve probably been taking things as they come, so you might find it pretty terrifying to spell out what you prefer and expect from a partner. However, you should definitely consider the possibilities beyond the panic: this is a fantastic opportunity to create or reshape a bond with intention and consideration, in order to have a more fulfilling and enjoyable relationship. If you can do this and establish an awesome connection while you’re apart, think how incredible the flow-on effects will be once you get to live in the same city!

Essential #2: Trust It should go without saying that any serious relationship you’re engaged in – friendships, romantic, or familial – ought to be one with trust on both sides. However, trust is particularly important when it comes to long-distance relationships.

No matter the precise conditions of your relationship – whether you’re monogamous or more open to other romantic or sexual partners – every partnership will have its boundaries.

Dates are fantastic – but going on dates every night? Firstly, that’s tiring, and secondly, you’ll probably run out of interesting things to talk about real fast.

Unless you’re both the kind of people who take exquisite joy in detailing their supermarket shops and lists of chores, make your voice and video chats a little sacred.

Keep the micro-updates on your strange lecturer and the sweet elderly cockatoo that lives in your backyard to messages and Snapchat.

Showing your affection in one of these ways can be as easy as Googling ‘[specific love language] ideas’ and picking out options you like. There are plenty of unique love language influenced ways you can show your care for someone despite physical distance – the one glaring exception being physical touch. Which brings me to my next point…

Closing the distance – temporarily and permanently

Speak their language I’m not referring here to your date’s mother tongue (although this may also be a good idea). Gary Chapman’s book 5 Love Languages suggests that people show affection towards others, and consequently prefer to have affection shown towards them, in five primary ways.

There are simple ways to pick up which one a person identifies with most – even when you’re long distance.

Are they screenshotting your cute compliments on Snapchat? They’re probably into words of affirmation. If they call you up on Skype just to chat about your respective days, their love language is likely quality time.

Have they ever mailed you drawings on post-it notes or other little tokens of appreciation, just to show they were thinking of you? Gifts are their thing.

If you feel like you can’t trust your partner to stick to those established boundaries – whether these transgressions are actual or imagined – and are always questioning their behaviour when they’re not around you, long distance is going to be mentally and emotionally exhausting for you both. Don’t go there.

You don’t need to talk every day While keeping in contact is super important, specifically talking every day just isn’t necessary. When you’re long distance, getting to hear their voice on the phone or see their face over video chat is an embarrassingly big rush. In fact, it’s probably the closest thing you’ll have to going out on a date most of the time.

affection through physical touch.

Those into acts of service will offer to proofread that essay you’ve been slaving over or might order you pizza at the end of a tiring day. And if they can’t stop cuddling you, or get a big silly grin on their face whenever you’re holding hands in public on the rare occasions you get to hang in person; they probably show

While the prior tips can definitely help to ease the sense of separation and confusion and mediate any weird feelings while you are apart, they’re not intended to keep a relationship chuggin’ along on the smell of an oily rag and no actual human contact. The most important part of any long-distance relationship is having a plan to be together in person.

This is, admittedly, easier for some couples than others. When one or both of you are on uni exchange, for instance, there’s a clear end in sight, whereas if you met on exchange, it’s likely that thousands of kilometres and the significant cost of international airfares currently separate you. For other couples, the realities of both partners having serious commitments (work, study, family and the like) in separate cities can be a major consideration and is often challenging to deal with practically.

But the fact of the matter is this: if you’re keeping this relationship going despite the distance, you hopefully care deeply about this person and really enjoy their company. It should be natural for you both to have an inclination toward ‘closing the distance’: at first with visits and holidays, and eventually – if you’re both serious about each other – by living closer to each other. With some care and consideration, you can navigate long distance; but, by far, the best part of this journey is coming out the other side.

CULTURE // LIFE & STYLE

Issue 9, Vol. 67

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A Different Style of University Life Text: Michael Fairlamb New friends, lovers, knowledge, and experiences… Independence from parents or guardians, and the first taste of real ‘adult’ freedom. We often associate these exciting dreams with the allure of university for students, along with many other dreams about life after school. As it turns out, the hype of these dreams can disguise some of the more challenging aspects of student life. New students often discover a whole new world of stress, spawned by a hard-to-manage blend of study, work, and trying to maintain an active social life. On top of this, students often struggle with arranging accommodation in an increasingly expensive and competitive market.

The Canberra Student Housing Co-operative (CSHC) seeks to address this last issue, though in reality it often assists its members with all of these concerns and more. I have been living at the CSHC for the last six months, and in that time have discovered an unparalleled network of support. The Co-op (or its fond abbreviation, the CSHC) is an internally-managed organisation with the intention of providing safe, affordable housing and a supportive and empowering community to students in Canberra. Members (read: residents) contribute to the community by sharing the responsibilities of cooking, cleaning, gardening and generally caring for each other. The Co-op currently houses 29 students, spread across five self-contained units in Havelock House, each with a set of shared bathrooms, showers, a lounge, dining room and kitchen. Each member has one key to their individual room and another key which gives them access to all of the communal spaces in the five units. Never before have I lived in a house with five lounges and 28 housemates, and it is hard to fully explain the unique quality of this experience without writing a book. Nevertheless, I will try to give a taste of what the co-operative lifestyle offers to those who live here.

To me, the most defining feature of

Co-op life is communal dinner. From Monday to Thursday, we have an optin roster to cook and share meals in our common areas. We sign up for one night in a fortnightly cycle, with three to four people sharing the cooking each night. All the other residents merely show up to dinner and sit down.

This means that we have seven nights a fortnight where we don’t have to worry about cooking food, or trying to find a cheap dinner option elsewhere.

Instead, we are provided with three healthy dishes to choose from, with all of our dietary requirements catered for.

In addition, we have the opportunity to share a meal with 20+ other people several nights a week.

I believe this is one of the most powerful bonding experiences you can have with another individual or group. People associate food sharing with families, and it is a symbol of trust and mutual respect. Other species of social animals base their priority in eating on a hierarchy within the group. At the Co-op, we have a non-hierarchical structure per the way we approach our dinners. We start by putting aside plates of food for those who can’t make it on time, ensuring they will have food for when they get home from other commitments. After that everyone else has free reign to help themselves, sit around and share conversation. I find that this is also a perfect time for people to de-stress and debrief in a supportive environment from tough days at uni, work or other troubles in their lives.

The support that the Co-op offers is another key part of how we operate.

We maintain a Safe(r) Space policy, which endeavours to ensure the comfort of all people to express themselves, regardless of sex, gender identity, race, cultural background, sexuality, sexual practices, religion, or physical or mental ability. This extends to the events we run (including a once-per-semester party that has a tendency to get pleasantly wild) and our internal structures for addressing grievances between residents. There is also an incredible culture of mutual assistance between

residents for each other’s personal endeavours. Any Co-oper needing support, whether it be at pro-refugee rallies, exhibitions of their musical or artistic expression, or simply needing to borrow a car or a bicycle, has an immediate network of housemates to call upon. This extends to some of our organisational structures, where we pool some of our resources to further the ends of the group. We bulk buy a variety of essentials, from cleaning products to weekly vegetables. The purchasing power we achieve in this way allows us to buy items which would otherwise be far beyond the means of a student sharehouse. A nice Dyson vacuum costs each of us approximately 12 dollars to purchase. And, since the likelihood of 29 people needing to vacuum simultaneously is pretty slim, it generally works out that communal items like this are available when you need them.

There is one more thing about the Coop which consistently blows my mind.

This co-operative, which does ever so much for its members, was conceptualised and founded by a handful of friends, has been maintained for the past six years, entirely by the students who have lived here. In that time, it has quintupled in population, and evolved internal structures to deal with new problems, further its aims, and help maintain its principles. We run this for the benefit of each other, our community, and for our own health, happiness, and security.

This is only a fraction of what I could say about CSHC, how it is managed, what it achieves, or the amazing and diverse humans who I am proud to call my friends and housemates. Nevertheless, I hope it helps you glean an understanding of why we choose to live in a co-operative.

If you would like to find out more about the Canberra Student Housing Co-operative, check out our website http://www.csh.coop/ or FB page (feel free to shoot us a message), come and talk to us at the next ANU Market Day, or email us at contact@csh.coop.

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Week 5, Semester 2, 2017

Yarn Bomb Text and Image: Katie Ward Yarn bombing, or guerrilla knitting, is the placement of knitted art in public areas or property. It is a non-destructive art that delivers a political statement in an aesthetically pleasing package. Knitting is a symbol of typical female craft, and has been used in this work as commentary on traditional women’s roles.

The simplicity and visually appealing knitted pieces as a unit aid the viewer to contemplate the complexity of gender inequality.

The visual introduction of knitting into areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) is representative of women silently, yet colourfully, protesting sexual discrimination and taking their rightful place in these workplaces.

CULTURE // LIFE & STYLE

Issue 9, Vol. 67

DISCOVER // SCIENCE

sustainable campus bulletin Text: Grace Dudley

Local

Animal welfare wins

An intensive piggery proposed in Harden NSW has been refused by the local council.

The proposed project would house 25,000 pigs in very confined conditions for the entirety of their lives. The council considered the development application and decided that it should not go ahead for environmental reasons. The New South Wales Environment Protection Authority found that the risk of water, soil and air pollution would be too high if the development went ahead.

This is a great example of grassroots action succeeding – a range of community animal welfare groups teamed up together with the assistance of the Animal Defenders Office to oppose and put pressure on the council to reconsider this project.

did you know The ANU’s wildlife is abundant

Did you know that the ANU is home to 106 native animals and supports 10,000 trees?

The trolley infested waters of Sullivans Creek are actually home to eastern water dragons, long-necked turtles and frogs. There are also 11 species of mammals on campus, including bat species with special conservation status!

One of the reasons that the ANU has such a high diversity of species is its location between Black Mountain and Lake Burley Griffin. Get acquainted with our wildlife by joining programs like Frogwatch later this semester.

tips

How to throw batteries responsibly

away

You can recycle batteries at different stations across the University. For example, there is a container in the Law School foyer and at the ANUgreen office near the medical school.

Drop your batteries off and reduce the impact of batteries on the environment. Up to 94 percent of batteries are not recycled, ending up in landfill. The impact of this is massive: chemicals that are contained in batteries include nickel and cadmium which are toxic to both the environment and to human health (particularly water pollution and dangers to wildlife).

events Campus art

Our Campus Environment Photography Competition is on display at the Pop Up Village until the 24 August. You can vote for your favourite image and, in doing so, appreciate both the beauty of our campus environment and reflect on the impact we have on it on a day to day basis.

Clean up campus for coupons!

ANUgreen is organising a clean-up day on campus. Come help the Sustainability Office remove litter along the creek and enjoy a free Dendy movie ticket in return! Volunteers will be provided with litter picks, gloves and bags.

Date/Time: 12.30-1.30pm, 23 Aug 2017 Where: Meet at the Denis Winston Walkway bridge between Chifley and Hancock Libraries Why: Make our campus a better place for everyone, and earn a free Dendy movie ticket!

RSVP with anugreen@anu.edu.au by Tuesday 22 August.

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Do something today for a greener tomorrow!

Text: ANUgreen Every year the average Australian family produces enough rubbish to fill a three-bedroom house, equating to a massive 2.25 kg of waste per day! Australia’s waste generation is one of the highest in the world, and it is time that we all do something about it. As individuals, we can make a big difference by simply reusing, reducing and recycling; decreasing our wastage and increasing our share of the recycling. However, avoiding waste generation in the first place is the best thing one can do. Just imagine what we could all accomplish if we were waste wise when shopping. Doing something as simple as buying in bulk and avoiding single packaging, bringing our own bags, using reusable containers and repairing items instead of replacing them.

With a community of more than 25,000 people, the Australian National University (ANU) has committed to act responsibly towards minimising waste. In recent years, the ANU has made significant efforts to reduce its contribution to landfill waste and is encouraging students and

staff to recycle actively. With more than 200 recycling bins available to the public across the campus, there is no reason not to recycle.

Additionally, the Facilities and Services Division (F&S) has recently introduced a new waste system that weights all bins individually on collection. Not only will this allow for the clients to pay only for the waste produced but it will also help to identify the high waste generators and follow up with targeted education and initiatives to positively change waste behaviours.

It is exciting to announce that the ANU is the first university in Australia to introduce smart bin sensors. This allows the engagement of waste collection services only when the bins are full enough to be emptied, rather than the status quo where garbage trucks come no matter if the bins are full or not. This new system has resulted in a saving of nearly $25,000 in 2016/2017, or over $2,000 on a monthly basis. It has also contributed to the ANU’s carbon emissions reduction targets – reducing the university’s carbon footprint.

However, it can be hard to remember

what can and can’t go into recycling.

With new generations of students coming to campus every year, it is good to remind ourselves about what to throw in the yellow bin. We all remember the usual – paper, cardboard, tins/cans, glass bottles and jars, – but don’t forget that you can also recycle: Pizza boxes, Advertising material, Egg cartons, Envelopes (even the ones with the clear plastic window), Takeaway food containers and coffee cups.

Beyond this, it is essential that we recycle our old and broken electronic devices and batteries. Not doing so will prevent toxic heavy metals leaking into the soil and water. Special recycling containers for old batteries, mobile phones, computers and other electronic gadgets are across the campus. These containers are found in all the libraries, Anthony Low #124, CBE #26C, Jaeger #142 and JCSMR #131, or you can simply email waste@anu.edu. au, and they will direct you to the nearest drop-off location.

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Week 5, Semester 2, 2017

DISCOVER // SCIENCE

The Threat of Geological Hazards to Australia and its Neighbours Investigating Geological Hazards with Professor Phil Cummins Text: Denis Lissogourski, Matthew Teh and Jenna Hoy While Australia might weather the brunt of cyclones and bushfires in the Asia-Pacific region, geological hazards tend to attract much less attention.

Thus, begs the question: should Australia’s natural hazard management policy do more to address geological hazards?

Despite the absence of large recorded earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in Australia’s historical past, the risks posed by geological hazards have more potential to affect our day to day lives than we may realise. And these geological hazards do happen in Australia: take, for example, the 1989 Newcastle Earthquake (a magnitude 5.6 earthquake that claimed 13 lives), or the geologically ‘recent’ eruption of Mt Gambier in South Australia 5,000 years ago.

Indeed, relatively recent events like the 2004 Boxing Day Earthquake and Tsunami, along with the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami, highlight the risks presented to our neighbours in the Asia-Pacific context. As Australia attempts to strengthen its neighbourly ties, the importance of understanding geological hazards present in the Asia-Pacific region becomes increasingly apparent.

Professor Phil Cummins, a researcher in Seismology and Mathematical Geophysics at the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences, looks at the risks associated with the hazards within the Asia-Pacific region. Investigating these risks is critical to improving the safety of people living in the Asia-Pacific region, and are even applicable to the Australian context.

One of the biggest challenges, says Professor Cummins, is that we don’t have a good record of high impact geological hazard events. When people build houses, plan for the future and look at the circumstances of living, geological hazards are of little consideration when things like high magnitude earthquakes only occur once every 10,000 years.

It’s this lack of information which Professor Cummins’s research focuses on.

Filling this gap of information is essential to maintaining the safety and security of some of the world’s most vulnerable communities, especially in southeast Asia and the southwest Pacific. As Professor Cummins tells us, Japan has one of the best historical records of geological hazards, but the events that unfolded on 11 March 2011 in Japan still came as a complete surprise.

Professor Cummins tells us that Japan prepared itself for large earthquakes as ‘many buildings certainly in Tokyo and northeast Japan were pretty resilient to that level of ground shaking’ – but ‘the tsunami was a lot bigger than expected’ and this is what caused the most amount of damage and fatalities. It’s the relatively poor knowledge of these sorts of events that makes them dangerous to communities, especially when they lack the information and resources to prepare for them.

This is where the investigation of geological hazards in relation to Australia finds its place. Professor Cummins says that Australia ‘can experience earthquakes up to magnitude seven or even up to magnitude 7.5’. It is not unlikely that such an earthquake might occur in a major urban centre, with potentially devastating consequences. Since the 1989 Newcastle Earthquake, building codes in Australia have been updated to include earthquake safety standards.

However, many buildings across Australia were built prior to these building codes and present a substantial risk today.

Throughout our discussion, this theme of the visibility of geological hazards remains a constant challenge for how Professor Cummins’s research can be used to save lives. The period over which geological hazards occur is based on long-term timescales, meaning that short-term government policy and public awareness remains insensitive to the underlying vulnerability of populations to these geological hazards.

Though weather – perhaps justifiably – remains at the forefront of the Australian public discourse surrounding

natural disaster management, Australia maintains a responsibility to protect against geological hazards for its own population. This includes the protection of its neighbours in the Asia-Pacific region. Professor Cummins tells us of the importance to support them as due to Australia’s economic investments, tourists and citizens in this region: Bali, Indonesia, is potentially the ‘source of the greatest earthquake and tsunami threat to Australian lives’. On this island in Indonesia, volcanoes and associated hazards like earthquakes and tsunamis may threaten the one million Australian citizens who visit Bali annually.

When looking at the objective of using research to save lives, Professor Cummins identifies the central problems as being the lack of awareness, the lack of resilient buildings, and the lack of historical records as being key to securing the safety of those living in less developed countries. This is especially true for those who reside on the island of Java, Indonesia. Part of the issues that Professor Cummins mentions is the little awareness of earthquakes, since ‘for some reason during the explosion of population in the 20th century there were just very few large, damaging earthquakes, despite many having occurred earlier during the colonial period’. People don’t take this into account when building houses – and so the Javanese population remain vulnerable to building collapse in the event of a very likely earthquake on Java.

Geological hazards have the capacity to affect the lives of millions. Professor Cummins mentions that historically volcanic eruptions in Indonesia have had major impacts on agriculture, which can cause widespread famine. In this context, the exposure of geological hazards faced in the Asia-Pacific makes Australia vulnerable to the hazards which may otherwise seem irrelevant and uncommon.

‘Even a moderate eruption in Indonesia or the southwest Pacific could cause a major disruption to air traffic to and from Australia, as we saw last year with the eruption of Mt Rinjani on Lombok [an Indonesian island next to Bali].’

Using analogues from places like Japan where initiatives which minimise the risks associated with geological hazards are integrated into everyday society, Professor Cummins says that Australia can investigate ways to minimise the risk presented to vulnerable populations, like those residing in Indonesia and the Philippines.

Though Australians may be unfamiliar with geological hazards, the globalised world in which we live – along with the indiscriminate nature of geological hazards – meaning that Australian research which addresses this risk remains important. In September this year, Professor Cummins along with several students from the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences are heading to Japan and several areas affected by the 2011 Earthquake and Tsunami to investigate the geological hazards facing our world today as part of the Australian Government’s New Colombo Program. Indeed, this is just one of the innumerable applications of geoscientific research - and that which, perhaps refreshingly, lies outside the mining focus present across much of Australian geoscience.

We left the interview with a newfound appreciation for how geology can act to save lives the world over. Thanks to the research of Professor Cummins and other hazard scientists, countless lives are potentially saved from the hidden threats of geological hazards – applicable not only to Australians, but to people in the world’s most vulnerable communities.

The research of Professor Cummins and other Australian hazard scientists is partially supported by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs, as well as the Australian Research Council.

Issue 9, Vol. 67

DISCOVER // SCIENCE

Preserving Cultural Biodiversity Text: Brody Hannan When we think of conservation, we often think about protecting the rarest species, the most threatened, or as many different species as possible.

But biodiversity is more than just enhancing this ‘species richness’ – the term conservation biologists use to describe the number of different species present in an area. Biodiversity can also be improved within a single species, which we can describe as ‘cultural biodiversity’.

Culture in animals While genetic diversity considers the differences between different species, cultural biodiversity is the differences in culture between populations of the same species.

But how do animals have ‘culture’, which is more typically used to describe differences in human populations?

Animals, too, can have different ways of doing things: different ways of accomplishing the same task and much like how humans develop different cultures.

Take how we eat for example. People from Western countries generally use knives and forks to eat their food. In many East Asian countries, chopsticks are predominantly the utensil of choice while In India, people traditionally used their hands.

Just like the human species, different populations of the same animal species have developed different tools to help them eat.

We’ve known for some time that chimpanzees’ and other primate’s ability to use a broad range of tools vary among the various populations across the African continent. Researchers from the Rockefeller University in New York and the University of Zurich claim that chimpanzees in Tai National Park of the Ivory Coast use stone hammers to crack open nuts and use sticks to ‘fish’ for ants and termites. Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Cambridge found that chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe National Park use blades of grass as ‘straws’ to hunt for termites. While the Gombe chimpanzees also use stone tools to remove nuts from their hard shells; they tend to use sticks to remove the remaining kernels instead of pounding the nut further with the hammer, as the Tai chimpanzees do.

Likewise, scientists have also found that different populations of New Caledonian Crows use a range of tools, such as

the thorny edges of leaves or twigs, to cut complex shapes into tree hollows to fish out grubs and larvae. Different populations of New Caledonian Crows manufacture these tools in a variety of ways depending on what species of trees are in their surroundings and the twigs and leaves they had at their disposal.

While all chimpanzees and New Caledonian Crows seem to have a pre-disposition for basic tool manipulation, their ability to construct more complex tools, particularly in using one to create or obtain another, is socially taught – passed on from parents to kin. Just as we learn from our seniors, animals cultivate a culture that remains unique to each population and is passed down.

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Questio humanniing the your elety of represe c ted ntatives ?

heck yo enroC u’r lled to vote,esta t. check.a ec.gov.a u

Preserving cultural biodiversity So why should we preserve cultural biodiversity, on top of having to safeguard ‘species richness’ and biodiversity in general?

Just like cultural diversity in the workplace can lead to greater creativity and innovation, cultural biodiversity of animals can also have economic benefits for humans through ‘ecosystem services’, which are the services that animals provide that support human life. Research has also shown that natural ecosystems are far more effective in providing these ecosystem services than any human-made use of the land could provide.

Enhanced biodiversity in our ecosystems offers ecosystem services which purify our air and water, manage pests and diseases, regulate climate, and decompose waste. While cultural biodiversity does not directly contribute to greater ecosystem services, the cultural biodiversity of different populations of species gives them advantages which aid the survival of a greater number and diversity of species in a range of environments. For example, the unique tools that New Caledonian Crows use to fish for insect larvae are what help them access sources of high-protein food, which helps them grow and ultimately gives them a better chance of survival.

Vol. 67 , Issue 7

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9-10AM WEEKDAYS

To ensure the survival of these species, the continued delivery of ecosystem services is essential.

Cultural biodiversity plays a key role in enhancing biological diversity and ensures the provision of ecosystem services. Because of this, the preservation of cultural biodiversity within a single species through the protection of separate populations is something that we as humans should seek to protect as much as we would any other rare or threatened species.

woroni breakfast radio >>> listen to us at WORONI.COM.AU/RADIO

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Week 5, Semester 2, 2017

DISCOVER // BUSINESS & ECONOMICS

The CBA: Will it Stay Australia’s Best Known Bank?

Text: Neeraja Shankar Qantas, Weetbix, Vegemite, and the Commonwealth Bank Australia, what do all these brands have in common? They are ubiquitous household names in any Australian family and are known and loved by all as intrinsically part of our identity.

However, following recent events, the likelihood of the Commonwealth Bank ofAustralia (CBA) remaining in this position is being seriously questioned. The influence of the CBA, as one of Australia’s most renowned bank, is obvious, with the latest scandal affecting numerous operational facets of the company.

The CBA is under investigation for their involvement in money laundering. This investigation is by Austrac who claim that there has been ‘serious and systematic’ legal breaches involving more than 53,000 transactions, which could have been used in acts of terrorism. As per regulations, all banks are expected to report cash deposits of over $10,000, which the CBA has failed to do for the aforementioned 53,000 transactions. Just prior to this controversy, the CBA increased their maximum deposit amount from $10,000 to $20,000.

This inadvertently resulted in this breach, as the systems they had in place to record and report any transaction that exceeded $10,000, had inevitably failed them.

This has numerous implications for the CBA in the short and long-term, with the possibility of employee pay cuts, layoffs, deteriorating share prices and management changes.

The CEO, Mr Ian Narev, was asked and ‘highly encouraged’ to step down. The CBA has already suffered from reputational damage due to the weakening of management, with the added notion of an ‘ethical elephant in the room’ restricting day-to-day activities. There has already been a $16 million cut to executives’ shortterm bonuses, with shareholders asking for more as insurance for the increased risk. As the investigation currently stands, Mr Narev will not get fired immediately but will be asked to step down early alongside a multimillion-dollar penalty. Finally, there has been a sudden, steep drop in share prices following the announcement of the investigation in early August.

Despite this, last week Mr Narev reported a $9.88 billion profit, the bank’s eighth consecutive record result. This brings in the question of whether share prices will suffer as much as people think they will.

The CBA has been involved in scandals, such as the CommInsure and Financial Planning Arm Scandals, in the past and has always been able to bounce back from them. Australian Brokers suggest that with their strong profit profile, the CBA will be able to pay any amount of fine and recover quickly. Last year, Tabcorp was fined $45 million by Austrac

for a similar scandal, which forecasters are using as an indicator of the estimated damage for the CBA. However, other global experts find this approach extremely risky. This is because the exact details of each case vary significantly and it is unknown how much the fine will be, and whether court fees and other administrative costs may get blown out of proportion.

Money laundering is a serious issue, and the fact that crime associations may have used the money makes it even more problematic. The CBA will definitely need to be held accountable for what has happened, and so they may not be able to shake this scandal off as easily as they have in the past. This may even require them to have a complete change in their branding program and the competitive rates that they currently offer. Currently, a lot of the CBA’s advertising campaign involves focusing on their technology aspect and their youthfulness, however, if they were to focus more on their humanitarian aspect this may help them rebuild their reputation. At present, the CBA does not seem to have lost a lot of their customer base, and it may not be wise for them to change their name and other aspects, as they will lose their marketplace recognition. While they may still hold their position as Australia’s leading bank, the gap between them and other banks may start narrowing, with their iconic status being very much at stake.

DISCOVER // BUSINESS & ECONOMICS

Issue 9, Vol. 67

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The Future of Retail

Image: http://graduate.olivet.edu/news-events/news/largest-employers-each-state?link=mktw

Text: Nick Blood

Current Trends: from physical goods to virtual services In the last few decades, there has been a noticeable trend across various markets towards online or virtual services being offered instead of (or alongside) the products they replace. Accelerated by technological innovations like the internet, physical products have become increasingly replaced by virtual equivalents: we send emails more than we write letters, we stream movies instead of buying DVDs. In the discipline of ‘corporate sustainability’, these transformative business models are sometimes referred to as ‘Product-Service-Systems’ (PSS), and they are a point of interest for their potential to replace physical products with virtual services that meet the same consumer need without as much environmental, social, or economic cost.

For as long as this trend has been occurring, experts have wondered what the implications are for the future of retail more broadly. More than a few have suggested that shopping malls and their kind are lurching towards an inevitable death. For Australians, this might be hard to believe. One reason for that might be that companies like Amazon are not operating in anywhere near the same capacity on our shores as they do back home in the US. As an Aussie who lived in America for many years, believe me when I say that you can get pretty much anything online, and Amazon is particularly good at enabling a couch shopping addiction.

They don’t just have books, but also a five-pound iron skillet you will cook the most amazing schnitzels in, and the right size for the exact pair of shoes you couldn’t find downtown. Amazon makes it possible to get Tim Tams shipped to your flat in Atlanta, USA. It’s a beautiful, and powerful thing.

It seems right to question how long ‘brick and mortar’ shopping centres

can survive competition like Amazon when it offers greater convenience and competes (often ferociously) on price.

The recent past in American business is complete with stories of similar companies that failed to adapt to new and disruptive online models. One memorable, and relevant, example is:

The story of Netflix and Blockbuster Blockbuster was a ‘bricks and mortar’ video rental empire that rose to prominence in the 1990’s. With the internet still in its infancy, and the technology required for video streaming still years away, physical stores that rented physical products was the only way people could watch the latest movies at home. This model became established over time, to the point that Blockbuster became perceived as an unstoppable juggernaut.

Then Netflix came along. An online model replaced physical stores and products. They met the same consumer needs: viewers could browse titles, pick one, and watch them – and do it all from the couch. We all know how that story ends; Netflix is thriving, and Blockbuster is a Wikipedia article. However, the story isn’t quite that simple, of course.

Netflix didn’t dethrone Blockbuster just because it offered video streaming, in fact, that’s probably not the main reason why.

Netflix’s business model was improved even further by providing subscriptions instead of a rental system. Importantly, those rental systems came with fines, which Blockbuster heavily relied on for revenue. If you ever wondered why Patrick Bateman in American Psycho keeps ranting about the need to return some videotapes, it’s because those fines were enough to terrify even a complete sociopath. Netflix would have probably overtaken Blockbuster even if it changed nothing else.

From a sustainability perspective, the Netflix story is an interesting one too – with an unexpected twist. Netflix’s service resembles principles expressed in ideas like PSS, and ‘Natural Capitalism’ that focus on replacing goods

with services: providing illumination instead of selling light bulbs. Netflix is quite aware of this and claims their model provides significant benefits to sustainability, citing reductions in energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.

Mainstream media pundits have praised this ‘green shift’ or ‘Netflixification’ as a more sustainable model.A Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is useful for interpreting and evaluating these claims like any Thought Leader would want to. An LCA is essentially a running tally of the ecological impacts involved in a product across its entire life cycle, including (but not limited to) design, manufacture, distribution, storage, use, and end of life (as waste or recycling). Getting this into a level of detail on a single product is quite difficult. Even Coca Cola struggled to provide a full LCA on a can of diet coke.

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts bravely attempted an LCA for Netflix and Blockbuster, and the results are surprising (See: ‘Shipping to Streaming: Is this shift green?’). Despite Netflix’s claims, often parroted in the mainstream media, the carbon footprint of streaming is twice that of rental models, and only reduces energy use by around 20 per cent. For it to be a distinct improvement, much work is yet to be done improving the underlying infrastructure of the internet that delivers streaming video. This is a collective challenge for Netflix, other online companies and even us consumers too – the internet is a shared resource we all use in different ways.

Rather than binary thinking where online is good/successful, and physical is bad/doomed, perhaps the story of how businesses thrive (and achieve sustainability along the way) is more complicated. Netflix disrupted Blockbuster by improving its overall model, and despite being online, it still has some work to do being a better corporate citizen (or it risks being disrupted itself on a long enough timeline).

Are shopping malls and retail centres doomed?

The complications of these stories would suggest it’s still too tough a call to make.

This isn’t just because Amazon and its kind are capable of disruptive innovation that will be difficult to predict, but also because in a place like America, the Blockbuster equivalent for shopping malls is Walmart – and they’re a unique case.

Walmart is far more of a monolith than Blockbuster ever was. The company ranks first nationally and internationally for sales and 17th in the Forbes 2000 global companies list. It employs a frightening number of Americans, (and is infamous for effectively lobbying against minimum wage increases and other employment legislation). Scanning the ‘Made in China’ labels as you wander a Walmart, the structural permanence of its model becomes even clearer.

Reflecting a broader trend towards globalised economies, Walmart’s countless stores function as a distribution wing of the People’s Republic of China, playing an important role in linking American consumers to Chinese manufacturers.

These realities add complexities to the story of retail’s future, in the US but also abroad. Other innovations could have unforeseen outcomes for either side. If wearable technology (including augmented reality) becomes ubiquitous, perhaps retail can evolve into a hybrid product/service model, and offer something new and communal that online experiences can’t. Every city needs an agora after all, no? But then, Amazon is investigating how to use AI-controlled aerial drones to deliver goods, which could offer convenience that trumps our need for shopping experiences to be social. These and a thousand other considerations are the long way of way of saying that it’s really, really hard to predict the future, which you probably already knew before you started this, but thanks for reading anyway.

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Week 5, Semester 2, 2017

DISCOVER // BUSINESS & ECONOMICS

The Prisoners’ Dilemma Text: Viv Duong As you’re sitting at your computer at 7:59 am, sleep deprived, and manically refreshing your Wattle page anticipating that 8 am tutorial sign-up, have you ever wondered how much more sleep you’d get if everyone agreed not to log on until 10 am?

The reason this agreement would most likely fail comes down to the world’s most famous game theory conundrum: The Prisoner’s Dilemma.

This theory attempts to explain why individuals often will not cooperate even if it is in their best interests.

This is traditionally presented in a payoff matrix table. Let’s restrict our game to two students, who have the option to ‘Sleep In’ or ‘Sign Up’. If

both students sleep in, they’re both better off, so we’ll give this outcome an arbitrary value of 3 for each student (top left square). If Student 2 sleeps in while Student 1 signs up, Student 2 can get more sleep but is disadvantaged because the good tutorial times are most likely taken up, so will be assigned a value of 1.

On the other hand, while Student 1 couldn’t sleep in, she is more likely to get her desired tutorial time, so we’ll assign her a value of 4 (top right square). The same applies vice versa (bottom left square). If both students sign up, they don’t get to sleep in and are both worse off, so we’ll assign them each a value of 2 (bottom right square).

Looking at the values, we see that both students will be collectively better off if they slept in and waited

for 10 am. However, there remains the temptation for a student to wake up at 8 am to sign up on time as it increases her likelihood of getting that desired time, since everyone else is asleep. Since both students will feel this temptation, and also fear the outcome of waking up at 10 am to find that all the good tutorial classes have already been snapped up, both students will wake up before 8 am to sign up, despite the bleary eyes and throbbing head. They’ll end up in

the bottom right corner, collectively worse off. This is the ‘Nash Equilibrium’.1 So the next time you’re counting down the seconds and wondering why you’re awake at an ungodly hour, remember that the Prisoner’s Dilemma could explain it all.

Highly recommend watching A Beautiful Mind.

1

Lessons from the Credit Crunch Text: Vikrum Sithambaram Trust. Something so fragile and so intangible is the only thing that keeps the entire financial system running smoothly. The banks trust that you repay your loans. You trust that the banks will keep your money safe. So, what happens when that trust breaks down?

That’s exactly what occurred during the Global Financial Crisis that led to what is known as a ‘credit crunch’. Put simply; a credit crunch occurs when banks become paranoid about the corporations they lend to – usually due to a period of lenient loan-giving. This hurts the economy because a lot of companies rely on debt to pay their workers. Workers that don’t get paid don’t spend money on goods and services. Corporations that don’t make money from the sale of goods and services cut back on production and lay off workers – continuing a vicious circle. What’s worse, now that there are fewer customers available, banks usually jack up interest rates for the few remaining customers they have, again, reducing the disposable income that consumers have available. So yeah, long story short, credit crunches are bad.

Why did a credit crunch occur during the Global Financial Crisis? A lot of it was to do with low-interest rates. Low-interest rates seem good at first, especially to the consumer. You get to borrow more money and can pay it off quicker, right? Technically, yes. And what’s the best investment you can make, from conventional wisdom? Property. After all, it only increases in value, and God sure isn’t making any more of it. Banks loaned to everyone they possibly could by offering mortgage packages with low

introductory rates to sweeten the deal.

Once they had lent to all the consumers with good credit, they moved on to those with bad credit – known as ‘subprime mortgages’. With all this demand, housing prices rose a dramatic 40 per cent between 2000 and 2006. The loans were tied up in a series of complicated chains of consolidated loans sold to investors and backed by insurance companies, with credit rating companies being bought off to confirm that these were indeed low-risk investments that wouldn’t fail. It all ended in 2007 when interest rates were hiked up to counter inflation.

Mortgages became suddenly more expensive while the prices of petrol, health care and food rose at the same time due to inflation. That was the beginning of the end. Defaults on mortgages went up, and housing prices went down, meaning the banks lost money on every foreclosure. Lehman Brothers, the fourth largest investment bank in the United States failed. AIG, one of the insurance companies involved, needed a $182.3 billion bailout from the federal government just to keep the masses from panicking.

Banks refused to lend to one another out of fear of receiving the bad debt wrapped up in derivatives and securities. Federal governments were forced to inject a huge sum of cash to stop the banks from not lending to each other (also called illiquidity). Many banks were on the verge of failure. They needed bailouts to ensure that so those weaker financial institutions were bought up as opposed to letting them go bust.

What have we learned from the largest worldwide recession in recent memory? Firstly, that there is no such thing as free money. You’d think that you wouldn’t have to tell a financial institution that. But, during the ‘Great Moderation’ – as it’s called for being a period

of low-interest rates and stable growth, banks were handing out money to anyone with a bank account at low (or in the case of Japan, zero) interest rates.

Nowadays banks are a lot stricter as to who they loan to, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing considering NINJA (No Income, No Job, No Asset) loans used to be a thing. The second being that banks need to have enough capital to shore up their losses. Banks never had enough equity to recoup the losses as more debt and low equity drives share prices up, which makes shareholders weak at the knees. I should mention that there were guidelines in place as to how much capital banks needed to have since 1988, but it left the definition of ‘capital’ at the discretion of financial institutions. Towards the GFC it might as well have been ‘a piece of paper with the word CAPITAL scrawled on it.’ Finally, that ‘too big to fail’ is a necessary evil in our trust based society. Lehman Brothers collapsing did more harm than good and left the government spending more money trying to rescue the score of other companies that were dragged down with the investment giant. The alternatives would be something straight out of the Great Depression, where middle class working families woke up one day to realise they had no savings because their banks disappeared overnight.

Some might ask why we weren’t able to foresee what was to come in the events leading up to the GFC. It was partially because you can’t escape the bubble once you’re stuck in one. Chuck Prince, Citigroup’s former CEO once paraphrased Keynes’ analogy: ‘When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance.

We’re still dancing.’

DISCOVER // BUSINESS & ECONOMICS

Issue 9, Vol. 67

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Thank me AfterPay-ing for this stock Text: Albert Patajo Has anyone else noted the ‘AfterPay’ logo on some online shopping websites?

It’s a payment option on popular online shopping sites such as The Iconic, Country Road, Booktopia and so forth. It even has RM Williams on board if you wanted to buy a pair of those Craftsmans for that North Shore look.

Afterpay Touching Holdings (Afterpay) is a payment system that works through instalments – you purchase the item and every fortnight you pay four equal instalments. For example, if you bought a Dyson vacuum cleaner for $400, with Afterpay, you’d pay four $100 instalments for four fortnights until it’s paid off. These instalments are interest-free, which makes Afterpay the perfect payment system for large ticket items that you’re trying to purchase but can’t afford to put up the cash upfront. This works especially well as you can spread out the cost of the item over eight weeks instead of paying large sums upfront.

Sounds great right?

Afterpay generates a significant majority of their revenue from merchant fees – a fee paid by retail clients who choose to offer customers Afterpay as a payment option. A smaller proportion of their income is made from late fees when

customers are unable to pay off their monthly instalments. However, Afterpay reported that less than 1% of their users paid instalments late.

As of this article, Afterpay has over 200 merchants using their payment system including large retailers Officeworks, Myer, David Jones and smaller boutique retailers. This showcases its growing popularity and scale.

So why is this a great investment? Firstly, it’s a bit of a penny stock, trading at the $3 mark right now. Afterpay has been around since 2015 but has only started to gain traction online. It has a high customer retention rate, with roughly 65 per cent of users being repeat customers.

The scalability of Afterpay makes it a desirable investment – it’s already been shown to be incredibly popular with retailers domestically, and it might be a matter of time before they spread either internationally or spread to other industries.

Afterpay’s technology makes it another attractive investment. The platform operates using a ‘Transaction Integrity Engine’ which conducts fraud and repayment assessments for potential users to determine whether there are potential risks to Afterpay. This allows Afterpay to minimise risks and bad debt. Interestingly, this intellectual property is owned

by Afterpay and would make for a great acquisition by a much large company in

the future.

fantastic low-value stock to buy into, especially as the Australian online economy and retail market continue to grow.

It has an attractive business model and has many opportunities in the market to continue to grow. Moreover, it’s currently experiencing substantial levels of growth and is looking to expand instore to allow for customers to use Afterpay in-person, rather than just online.

This all indicates to the future price of the stock rising higher than its current price in the near future. It has already doubled since May last year and there is still much more room for growth if their popularity continues to increase and their online presence grows, the stock could easily rise in the next 12-24 months, leading to significant gains for investors.

Lastly, with the movement of Amazon into the Australian market and the onHowever, Afterpay comes with some line retail economy looking to get dissignificant risks. Firstly, in their pay- rupted, Afterpay’s scalability makes it ment system, Afterpay actually pays the an incredibly attractive buy if they can merchant for the item, and the custom- partner with a large disruptor such as er (you) pays back Afterpay through the Amazon. This is purely speculative at four instalments. This means Afterpay this stage, but the market opportunities is operating with significant capital re- are ripe for the taking. quirements and the exposure risk to a lack of capital is quite high. Secondly, If you’re thinking about buying into AfAfterpay relies massively on strong re- terpay, this is one you hold onto for the lationships with retailers. There is no ride. It might just be the next ‘big thing’ guarantee that this relationship will in online shopping. continue or whether relationships with future merchants will be successful, and Albert Patajo is a final year Law/Science the success of the company depends on student currently writing his Law Honthem building great connections with ours thesis in financial market regularetailers. Lastly, exposure to bad debt tion. He has a small but growing portfolio or customers who default on payments spread across the ASX and other markets. poses another risk. Although their algo- If you want to learn more, he is more than rithm provides some risk management, happy to help other students start their it would be impossible to remove all risk journey in the ‘stock market’. exposure altogether.

Despite these risks, Afterpay is still a

How Machine Learning Will Predict Your Next Moves Text: Rohit Ram

If you’ve been browsing the internet lately, you’ve undoubtedly heard of machine learning being used in just about everything. You may frequently hear that we live in the age of information and may have even heard of ‘Big Data’. But what does all this mean and what are the ramifications for the world as we see it?

Essentially, this buzz term which shapes the modern corporate landscape refers to the fact that companies have an excess of data; so much so, that these companies are at odds with how they can interpret data and don’t know what to do with it. Data is a pretty powerful thing, which has a lot of untapped potential.

Some businesses just sit on that data and do a few rudimentary statistical analyses to make internal business decisions.

But think of the possibilities if we were able to exploit this data. Imagine if a company was able to search through

anything consumers had ever publically stated about their product on the internet. This potential use of big data has tremendous corollaries for the marketing and advertising sector as a whole. This process is known as sentiment analysis, where a machine tries to deduce how humans feel about something through their writing. For a company, this is also invaluable market research, which can be put back into their products/service, to better serve key demographics by improving products based on reviews.

Financial traders also sometimes use sentiment analysis to detect fluctuations in stock prices by using the changes in sentiment as indicators of stock value.

Sometimes sentiment well before a stock does, which might be profitable.

However, why does this matter to the average person? You might think that only large corporations, multi-million dollar hedge funds and traders benefit from this application of machine learning.

But, in fact, this is also to the average person’s advantage.

Perhaps the only limiting factor to this data-fuelled future is the type of information companies have at their disposal. People don’t like having their private information explicitly taken. There are also legal issues about acquiring information from users, related to privacy.

Questions such as to what extent companies can take personal information and use it for their benefit rise. Where do privacy and the right to autonomy step in to ensure that we don’t have a Big Brother-esque situation meet?

For example, if McDonald’s decided to predict the next drive through order, by recording data such as your number plate with your Big Mac order, you can bet there would be hues and cries about privacy and right to personal information. Even more problematic, is the potential for identity crimes as possible extensions of this technology can recognise and store facial recognition data to make decisions about you.

It is clear that corporations are staying well away from the use of intimate information, at least at the current time, and

only use publicly accessible information to profile you. This sort of thing is constantly happening, evident through the levels of Big Data which we have in this age. You may have already noticed this happening on your Facebook news feed, specifically showing ads, which are creepily specific to what you’ve recently been speaking about or searching. The bigger your data, the more you can learn about anyone. This is the world that dystopic science fiction writers feared and the adoption of machine learning, albeit less morbid, poses interesting questions for the future.

A more realistic future lies in this carefully thought out balance.

There’s one main suggestion I would make to students in the age of machine learning: learn to code. This trend will continue and become increasingly relevant in all facets of society, particularly in marketing and business operations.

The possibilities of data analytics are endless and particularly exciting to keep track of.

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Week 5, Semester 2, 2017

Prompted // Creative

Reflections

Perspectives

Mahalia Crawshaw

Holbrook Spartan

I see myself in puddles.

wet holes Deep, Empty, empty wells Giving, giving, scraping the bottom of the dark damp pit Dry, so dry The ocean sways, the creek heaving, the base of the shower gurgling Full, so full, but empty

Perspective One

I catch myself looking in the shop window Bulging, ballooning, swelling Crooked, imperfect Dissimilar to the white, faceless mannequins

A fire kindled, not by passion or reason or hatred Just suspended in the amber of flesh As it has been, always

My echo on a polished surface The bonnet of a car ‘I want to see my face shining in it by morning’ I ScrUB and SCRub and ScruB My mirror My mirror, mirror on the wall Turning inward Crawling, crawling within myself Squint and I can maybe even see the shape of me But not me A better me They slink in, quietly, slowly Laid across my floor Hung upon my wall Smiles, smiles and crinkled eyes Some figures gone, others lost There stilted smiles are all I have left Moments seized, caught, held onto I change, and they change We remember

Cast your gaze at the wanderer’s eye; It never moves.

A glassy orb cast in watery stone Humming in static silence.

Layers within layers peeled back to reveal a sight unseen The histories written in that stare Exist to make words useless

A stare thrown a thousand yards or more Weathered and beaten from life gone by What would you know about what he sees?

Perspective Two Drowned in the shadow of the colossus A figure that once stood with the world at his feet A seat at the table, a feast of ashes The dying whimper of a golden age Stalked high upon a pile of wasted days Swallowed by a narrowing horizon I thought I would be more than this The gravity of the sunlight Did not bear freight on his shoulders until it meant nothing at all A red velvet corridor, constraining A crown cast in sand Resting upon a furrowed brow An heir to himself, to wash away with the tides

I can glimpse at it in other people’s eyes Do I annoy you, dear brother?

Does my laugh sting?

Do my words become shrill?

Do my arches not fit your puzzle?

I will only ever see shadows, replications of myself

To Have Succeeded or Not in Sleep A Little Fuji Apple Let me…

I cannot refrain, No. Let my innate desires guide me Please.

I seek nought but to retire to now, a heavenly realm where From void manifests Everything that invites and evades imagination…

I love and fear equally Exercising no control in an ephemeral sphere.

A dalliance or two is the most potent dream, Although my circumstance does not permit, In this lecture of yours, I plead with thee! …yes.

At long last To a sleep

SATIRE

Issue 9, Vol. 67

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ANUSA Probity Officers Unveil Bold New Plan to Curb Overzealous Campaigning in Union Court Office announced to a packed press room yesterday that a large fence had been placed around the no-go area to keep student politics out once and for all.

The Probity Office spokesman, Logan Wemyss, explained that the radical new tactic was designed to stop the Union Court ‘student politics pandemonium’ at the very root of the problem: ANU’s student population. Guards at the perimeter will turn away anyone who even remotely looks like a student before they can utter the words ‘consultation, representation and diversity’.

Wemyss observed that while an unsightly eight-foot fence – severely restricting use of facilities and likely causing the death of the many small businesses in the zone – may seem like a bit much, Union Court is ‘already calmer and quieter than ever before at this time of year.’

Text: Cormac Relf ANU students walking through Union Court expecting to be harangued by aspiring leaders are in for a welcome surprise.

After months of policy reform discussions, ANUSA Probity Officers have dreamed up what they call a ‘moonshot’ plan to make Union Court a more relaxing place to be this election season.

As was widely anticipated, officers have declared a bigger campaign-free zone than ever before. All of Union Court, the bridge, much of Sullivan’s Creek and many surrounding buildings are now off-limits to candidates wanting to pitch their policies to unsuspecting passers-by.

Noting the difficulty of enforcing such an ambitious exclusion zone, the Probity

Citing perennial enforcement difficulties such as candidates ‘pretending to be merely over-interested and remarkably chipper regular students in colourful clothing’ and ‘distracting probity officers with fluffy dogs’, the officers felt a new approach was warranted. ‘We feel very strongly about protecting the student experience from being interrupted by opinions about the student experience,’ a statement issued to the press reads. ‘If this is what will work, we are prepared to do it.’

Senior officials within the major political parties were cautiously optimistic about the changes, though some raised concerns about the fence hindering their ability to reach the mysterious student population that attends classes on the ‘sciencey’ side of campus. ‘We don’t traditionally see a lot of engagement from those people in chemistry or whatever’, said one Gen Rep candidate, who went on to express grave concern about representing their views in student government.

Another candidate claimed that she had long anticipated the news, and was entirely prepared. The ‘ANUSA elections are all about making use of the bottlenecks on campus’, she said, standing ominously in the middle of the 6-metre-wide path at the connection of Marcus Clarke St and what is left of University Avenue.

There remain difficult questions about how effective the fence will be. Some postgraduate students walking through the safe zone late yesterday afternoon and early this morning reported being confronted by oddly familiar figures wearing high-vis green and orange clothing, and talking loudly about the unions. ‘They’re bigger and much scarier than last year,’ said one, who resigned himself to taking the scenic route around Chifley Library as in years past.

Chronic Over-Committer Promises ‘Never to Put Herself Through This Again’ While Writing an Application for the Federal Law Review Text: Zoe Saunders Illustration: Elizabeth Mogford Speaking in Week Nine of Semester One, Chloe Emmet confided in Woroni that she will be ‘taking it easy’ in Semester Two, having concluded that directing two drama productions, running for student council, interning at Parliament, working as a Senior Resident at Burgmann College and maintaining her part-time job at Lonsdale Street Roasters was ‘probably too much.’

‘Yeah, I really want to prioritise my mental health next semester,’ she confided, while entering a third internship application deadline into her Google Calendar. ‘There’s been such a push towards good mental health practices at uni lately. It’s really resonated with me,’ she said. ‘I found that five minutes of patting a lamb at the College of Law’s petting zoo totally alleviated my stress.

I felt so much better when only a few of my hairs fell out, rather than the usual clump.’

She, like many other Law Students, attended the Clerkship Evening later that day. ‘I was chatting to a representative from Clayton Utz,’ reminisces Chloe.

‘She told me she usually works about 80 hours a week. But they have excellent team building programs, so I’m definitely considering their grad program.’

When asked how her commitments have been affecting her assessments, Chloe stated she ‘wasn’t worried,’ glancing down at her iPhone 6 background quote: ‘Diamonds are made under pressure.’ When approached by Woroni reporters, Chloe’s Public Law lecturer explained ‘Chloe is a dedicated student; she’s led to a big spike in the use of Echo360 for my course.’ When asked to elaborate, Dr Kirby said, ‘We usually see a spike from her usage around 3 am.

Either that or she watches the whole course the day before the exam.’

Chloe was seen later that week popping caffeine pills and anxiously refreshing Facebook in what her friends described

as ‘an attempt to prevent meltdown number five this week.’

‘I just think it’s important to take time out to maintain my friendships; a social life is so important for mental health,’ Chloe said, as she commented the third round of fire emojis on her friend Laura’s new DP. The two exchange messages expressing a desire to meet for brunch, and to ‘actually do it this time!’ every couple of weeks. It has been eight months since they last saw each other.

Chloe is planning to spend her break volunteering at a community legal centre in the Northern Territory, whilst doing a winter course at Oxford by correspondence. Her aspiration board includes the goal of getting ‘at least five hours of sleep’ during the holidays.

Chloe’s struggle with mental health and over committing has led her to chair a mental health panel, write a series of contributions to a student-run psychology journal, and volunteer at Headspace.

‘It’s stressful, but worth it in the end.’

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Week 5, Semester 2, 2017

SATIRE

The Blue Bus is Callin’ Us, Driver, Where You Taken’ Us Text: Liam King ‘O! I can feel the cold earth upon me -- the daisies growing over me -- O for this quiet -- it will be my first.’

We now know the fate of ANU Bar and the ANU Union. 52 years of students deciding what they want has come crashing down in a noxious cloud of asbestos and corporate authoritarianism. God’s has gone, and their decision to settle was ominous for the Union in the long run.

So, The End circles campus, slowly engulfing it. What’s next?

The dust will settle; it always does. For the first time, since they were flamboyantly painted, the bar’s seats will be allowed to creak in peace. The chatter of friends will no longer sweeten the creek’s air. The Refectory’s floor will be clean at 6pm. And the students will head back to their tutorials and Mooseheads.

With its closure, ANU Bar and the rest of the Union were replaced with a ‘Braddon style’ decking. Braddon’s shit, I know, I’m from Fenner Hall – I live next door.

No bar goes off like our under-resourced Warren, even if it’s not allowed to serve spirits. Braddon’s a mix of young professionals and fledgeling, lost adults both too risk-averse to leave Canberra and too old to dance like nobody’s watching.

Newly-minted DFAT employees searching for the most freshly pressed almond milk, closest hitching post for their fixie-bike, and an answer to whether their

Sudoku

dream of saving the Barrier Reef is going to be accomplished by rubber stamping another coal mine. In Braddon, they’re squeezing everyone in – lots of new residents, no neighbours though.

It’s a bit Flat, it’s a bit White.

A conglomerate of forces calling time on our ANU has ringed the ANU Bar’s death knell. An Instagramming generation trapped between a neoliberal government and an accountant-driven university.

Give me a rock and a hard place any day.

On every metric, the ANU stood top.

Top of the rankings, with an out-ofclass culture and relatively high contact hours. We turned down the rotating door method of the University of Melbourne, the UNSW’s queue-inducing light rail connections, and the UQ’s architectural glitz and glamour.

Squat, Soviet bungalows, small class sizes all situated on a leafy green campus.

We’re the public-school kid receiving the perfect ATAR in a room of private school kids. We did the same, but we did it better.

Today is too warm to be so nostalgic, and I have too much to do. I should probably get back to studying. However, I’ve spent the last half an hour slipping into the serenity of Sullivan’s Creek, staring at something very far away.

I can’t stop thinking about a shitty green

couch. It was a relic of the days when I had no siblings, and my parents hadn’t fully mastered the art of adulthood. We used to eat on it, sit there far too late on school nights, jump and cavort until I inevitably hurt my undeveloped body.

Persistently there, consistently shitty, forever in the most sepia-toned of vignettes. Pay rises, more kids, and the creaks of age called the curtain on this Act in the King House. The mis-enscene - that seminal couch - had to go; it offered nothing but memories, and we needed some Italian leather. I cried a lot, kicked a little, possibly bit – I could be a real shit at times. I may have made some sage arguments; I can’t have been older than six– how apt could they really have been?

When the day came, I hugged it, gripped every corner, cushion and cloth until the knuckles on my little hands were white.

But after some time, all that was left were four whitewashed-walls and a little boy hugging a green seat cushion; every other bit, down to the detritus down the sides of the couch had been binned.

That day The End came for me. Definitiveness has a way of tainting memories; you can’t save the page from the spilt ink. We forget how permanent change is in the ferocious passage of time. Forget to spend another day on the shitty green couch.

Our chance is over, ‘Deal with it dickheads’ was as close as we got to negotiations or a facilitated discussion. At least the A-cadz bouncer assures you it will be for the best when he turns you away.

Fake hope is hope of a kind. We can’t drag ourselves back to Mr Wolf, our Thursday night is over. We’ll just have to loiter in a building site for the next couple of years.

Now it’s time for ReUnion Court. Time to turn around, run backwards and join the others in Australian Higher Education’s race to the bottom.

Does it make it any better if we think we’re going forward?

I hope the avocado in your $20 lunch is perfectly ripe, your chardonnay a palate-watering seven degrees Celsius and your parking spot closer to Copland.

Only then might you be able to enjoy this new university you won’t be able to afford.

A biting, Canberra breeze takes me back to the fact this is probably it. Our End this time.

Previous Edition Solutions

Credit: Sebastian Rossi

Issue 9, Vol. 67

SATIRE

48

Privilege, Position & Possums: What You Need to Know About the ANUSA General Election Text: Gene Pinter The Australian National University Students’ Association has recently come under fire for its lack of diversity following accusations by students that the Association does not reflect those whom it claims to represent.

In light of rumours that several of its 2017 members are involved in the distribution of illegally obtained Game of Thrones torrents, the allegations cast serious doubt over the legitimacy of the upcoming election. ‘There was total panic,’ an exclusive Woroni source has revealed.

‘Last week, I delivered 15 Meatlovers pizzas to the boardroom and found them all on the floor crying to their parents’ lawyers. I don’t know how they’re going to bribe their way out of this one.’

A spokesperson for the Association has come forward with a proposed solution to the issue: a new set of official positions to cater to and represent a wider range of student minorities on campus. Such new positions include Dank Memes Officer, Unconfirmed Major Officer, Burgmann Rights Officer, Shadow Realm Officer, Leaving Your Stuff In Chifley & Not Actually Using The Computer and/or Desk Officer, Goon Officer, Rick & Morty Season Three Awareness Officer, ‘James’ From ‘PHIL1007’ Who Sells ‘Brownies’ Officer, It Should Go Back to Being ‘Stalkerspace’ Officer, UberEats™ Officer, and I’m Not Sexist But Officer.

The spokesperson went on to specify the parameters of position eligibility, emphasising that diversity is of the utmost concern. ‘We welcome everyone to apply for the new positions. No longer will white cisgender heterosexual men be in charge.

Bring on the age of twelve possums in a trench coat leading ANUSA.’ (Woroni has reached out to several possums on campus, but none have expressed interest in running for the election.)

Asked about the level of interest expressed, the spokesperson continued, saying, ‘We’ve already had many students from a wide variety of backgrounds submit their nominations for the positions.

A friend of mine is going for Goon Officer, and he went to Bali last summer, so he’s practically Indonesian.’ When asked if the diversity push will threaten his position, the Association spokesperson informed us that he was graduating this year and that ‘what happens to [ANUSA] is none of my f***king business anymore.’

In a Woroni first we spoke to Craig*, a hopeful for the position of It Should Go Back to Being ‘Stalkerspace’ Officer.

Despite turning up to our interview 15 minutes late, Craig* was insistent that he would not back out of official responsibilities when the time came. ‘Someone has to speak for people like me,’ he said.

‘There’s a silent majority of the student body that wants the Facebook group name changed. It’s time to make Stalkerspace great again.’ Craig* refused to answer further questions, instead throwing us a Westside gang sign as he ollied out.

In related news, there have been calls to alter the name of the Association, as some feel that the second ‘A’ in ‘ANUSA’ is ‘too ambiguous’ and ‘makes the acronym [into] a word salad.’ Other proposed suggestions include the Bureau of Unresolved Tertiary Troubles, the Australian Students’ Scholarly Hub & Other Logistical Endeavours, and the Responsible Education Committee’s Tribunal for Underrepresented Minorities. There is no word from Vice Chancellor Brian Schmidt as to whether he will consider these recommendations at an administrative level, or whether he has any interest in the politics of the student body beyond informing us of the latest update on his blog. *Name changed for protection purposes.

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Across

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1 Alt media preps for fanciful delusion (4,5)

1 Hole cow? Maybe a dog (7)

4 Bear asses in space! (5)

2 Seep through curly hair and consume English (8)

6 Pitch, receives bullseyes (7) 7 Duck rapper (5) 8 English ring surrounds (9) 11 Character guy delivers the post (9) 14 Bismarck makes a funny toot! (4) 15 More atoms split up live-ins (4-5) 17 Slippery oil in the north covers a great beast (4) 18 A kilo of steak for the angry man! (5) 19 Smack a gang member says Spooner, and discipline your subordinates (5,3,4)

3 500 in dinner for gold! (5) 4 Looks after brains (5) 5 Filthy sodden faunas arrive home without harm (4,3,5) 9 Enquire after your friend and win the game! (9) 10 Stranger, archangel, me? Uniter of Europe! (11) 12 Pill pool? splash into Chordettes' hit! (8) 13 Liver? Intestine? 99 is additive free! (7) 16 Limply lean on the kingslayer from the reach (6)